An Enhanced VOF Method Coupled with Heat Transfer and Phase Change to Characterise Bubble Detachment in Saturated Pool Boiling

Anastasios Georgoulas, Manolia Andredaki and Marco Marengo
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Anastasios Georgoulas: Advanced Engineering Centre, School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, Cockcroft Building, Lewes Road, University of Brighton, Brighton BN2 4GJ, UK
Manolia Andredaki: Advanced Engineering Centre, School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, Cockcroft Building, Lewes Road, University of Brighton, Brighton BN2 4GJ, UK
Marco Marengo: Advanced Engineering Centre, School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, Cockcroft Building, Lewes Road, University of Brighton, Brighton BN2 4GJ, UK

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 3, 1-35

Abstract: The present numerical investigation identifies quantitative effects of fundamental controlling parameters on the detachment characteristics of isolated bubbles in cases of pool boiling in the nucleate boiling regime. For this purpose, an improved Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach, developed previously in the general framework of OpenFOAM Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Toolbox, is further coupled with heat transfer and phase change. The predictions of the model are quantitatively verified against an existing analytical solution and experimental data in the literature. Following the model validation, four different series of parametric numerical experiments are performed, exploring the effect of the initial thermal boundary layer (ITBL) thickness for the case of saturated pool boiling of R113 as well as the effects of the surface wettability, wall superheat and gravity level for the cases of R113, R22 and R134a refrigerants. It is confirmed that the ITBL is a very important parameter in the bubble growth and detachment process. Furthermore, for all of the examined working fluids the bubble detachment characteristics seem to be significantly affected by the triple-line contact angle (i.e., the wettability of the heated plate) for equilibrium contact angles higher than 45°. As expected, the simulations revealed that the heated wall superheat is very influential on the bubble growth and detachment process. Finally, besides the novelty of the numerical approach, a last finding is the fact that the effect of the gravity level variation in the bubble detachment time and the volume diminishes with the increase of the ambient pressure.

Keywords: two-phase flow; VOF method; OpenFOAM; pool boiling; phase change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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