Study on heat transfer for falling liquid film flow with consideration of interfacial evaporation

The interfacial evaporative heat transfer was included in the semi-empirical study of the heat transfer for the falling liquid film flow. The investigations showed that, the inclusion of the interfacial eveiporative heat transfer in the turbulent model would lower the predicted convective heat transfer coefficient. Predictions of the new model resulted in a prominent deviation from that predictions of the normal model in the case of large mass flow rate and low wall heat flux. This deviation will be decreased with increasing wall heat flux, such that it will be asymptotic zero at very high wall heat flux. Predictions of the new model agreed well with the current experimental measurements. This study has verified that the Reynolds number is not the sole crucial parameter for heat transfer of falling liquid film flow, and wall heat flux will be another important independent parameter. This result is consistent with our previous studies.

Interfacial Evaporation of Falling Liquid Films with Wall Heating

The interfacial evaporation of falling water films with wall heating was experimentally studied and analyzed. The results presented in this paper showed that the capillary induced interfacial evaporation played an important role in heat transfer of a falling liquid film. It would be independent of the wall heat flux and somewhat lower than that without wall heating for impure fluids such as water air system. The thermodynamic analysis conducted gave a theoretical basis for the experimental observations. The effective capillary radius was correlated with the mass flow rate. The experimental results and analysis showed that the interfacial evaporation should be taken into account in the study of falling liquid film heat transfer.

Gas Absorption by Wavy Falling Liquid Film Formed on Inner Surface of Vertical lubes

An experimental study on gas absorption into falling liquid film formed on inner surface of vertical tubes has been carried out in order to clarify fundamental characteristics of the gas absorption and enhancement by surface waves. The water supplied into the test tubes is periodically disturbed by fluctuating a silicon tube before the test section with a speaker and the wavy films absorb the oxygen filled in the tubes. Imposing the periodic disturbance enhances the gas absorption and the enhancement has a maximum at around 20-30 Hz, where the gas absorption is 20-30% higher. Mass transfer coefficients obtained with five tubes agree well with those obtained with single tube. Two-dimensional numerical simulations have also been conducted for gas absorption by wavy film and the enhancement mechanism of the gas absorption is discussed.

Numerical Simulation Using Boundary Element Method of the Mechanism to Enhance Heat Transport by Solitary Wave on Falling Thin Liquid Films

A boundary element method has been developed for analysing heat transport phenomena in solitary wave on falling thin liquid films at high Reynolds numbers. The divergence theorem is applied to the non-linear convective volume integral of the boundary element formulation with the pressure penalty function. Consequently, velocity and temperature gradients are eliminated, and the complete formulation is written in terms of velocity and temperature. This provides considerable reduction in storage and computational requirements while improving accuracy. The non-linear equation systems of boundary element discretization are solved by the quasi-Newton iterative scheme with Broyden's update. The streamline maps and the temperature distributions in solitary wave and wavy film flow have been obtained, and the variations of Nusselt numbers along the wall-liquid interface are also given. There are large cross-flow velocities and S-shape temperature distributions in the recirculating region of solitary wave. This special flow and thermal process can be a mechanism to enhance heat transport.

Numerical Investigation of Kinetic Energy and Surface Energy of Wavy Falling Liquid Film

Numerical simulations have been carded out for two-dimensional wavy falling liquid film in order to investigate kinetic energy and surface energy of that liquid film. Governing equations, which are continuity equation, Na-, vier-Stokes equation, and equations of interfacial boundary conditions including surface movement and effect of surface tension, have been solved directly by means of a numerical scheme based on the finite difference method. In most cases, periodic disturbances superimposed at inflow boundary grow to fully developed waves Which retain the given periodic behavior. In some cases, however, random waves appear after the fully developed waves. Variations of kinetic energy and surface energy of the periodically developed waves and the random waves have been discussed.

The effect of interfacial evaporation on heat and mass transfer of falling liquid film

Analysis of experimental data and estimation of the order of magnitude for interfacial mass diffusion have demonstrated that considerable excess evaporation exists on the free interface of falling liquid film, and that the capillary pressure caused by surface tension is the driving force of this excess interfacial evaporation, which we called the “capillarity-induced interfacial evaporation”. By correlating the experimental data, an empirical expression of the effective capillary radius, r\-e, is obtained with which the evaporative rate formula we derived and reported previously has been modified to improve the prediction of the critical heat flux for film breakdown. Comparisons with the available predicting models show that our modified equation can predict the experimental results with much lower relative deviation.