Heat Transfer Engineering, Vol.28, No.10, 852-860, 2007
A visualization study of bubble behavior in saturated flow boiling through a vertical mini-tube
Forced convection saturated R-134a boiling experiments were conducted in a vertical mini-quartz tube coated with a transparent heater; the inner diameter of the tube was 1.33 mm and the heated length 235.5 mm. The dynamics of the saturated boiling process, bubble characteristics, and behavior were studied using a high-speed CCD camera at different mass fluxes in up-flow at 6.425 bar. The heat fluxes were 5 and 20 kW/m(2). The flow visualization results show that the bubble departure frequency generally increases as the heat flux increases. In addition, bubble lift-off diameter, growth rate, and velocity after bubble lift-off were determined by analyzing the images.