Research Projects

Boiling heat transfer is used in variety of industrial processes and applications, such as refrigeration, vapor cycle power generation, heat exchangers, petroleum refining, and chemical manufacturing. Enhancements in boiling heat transfer processes are critical for making these applications more energy efficient. 

The aim of this research is to demonstrate the water pool boiling phenomena under the influence of environmentally friendly surfactant additives(1) and various structured surfaces to examine geometry effects(2). For determining surfactant effects, different concentrations of surfactants will be added to pure water and enhancement through surfactants will be quantified at different concentrations. The lowered surface tension with surfactants reduces the critical nucleation radius, thus proceeding more active nucleation sites and allow the departures of smaller sized bubbles. For determining geometry effects, boiling on smooth surface will be compared with holed, channeled, and finned surfaces. High speed camera and IR camera will be used to study the bubble mechanism and measuring wall superheat in varying heat fluxes. Enhancements in boiling heat transfer causes reduced time until boiling, increased number of nucleation sites and decreased level of wall superheat and therefore higher heat transfer coefficient.

• Learn more about research projects in the Daytona Beach College of Engineering and its Department of Mechanical Engineering.