Coupling droplets/bubbles with a liquid film for enhancing phase-change heat transfer

Rongfu Wen; Wei Liu; Xuehu Ma; Ronggui Yang

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.102531

Coupling droplets/bubbles with a liquid film for enhancing phase-change heat transfer

iScience. 2021 May 11;24(6):102531. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102531. eCollection 2021 Jun 25.

Authors

Rongfu Wen¹, Wei Liu², Xuehu Ma¹, Ronggui Yang²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, Liaoning Key Laboratory of Clean Utilization of Chemical Resources, School of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China.
² School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.

Abstract

Evaporation, boiling, and condensation are fundamental liquid-vapor phase-change heat transfer processes and have been utilized in many conventional and emerging energy systems. Recent advances in the manipulation of interface wetting and heterogeneous nucleation using micro/nano-structured surfaces have enabled exciting two-phase flow dynamics and heat transfer enhancement. However, independently manipulating droplets, bubbles, or liquid films through surface modification has encountered bottlenecks. In this Perspective, we discuss an emerging strategy where droplets/bubbles are coupled with a liquid film to control fluid dynamics for minimizing the thermal resistance between the liquid-vapor interface and solid substrate, thus significantly enhancing the heat transfer performance beyond the state of the art.

Keywords: Energy systems; Fluid dynamics; Heat transfer; Interface transport; Phase-change.

Publication types

Review