In Proceedings of the 33rd National Heat Transfer Conference, Albuquerque, NM (Recipient of Best Paper Award)
T. M. Adams, S. M. Ghiaasiaan, and S. I. Abdel-Khalik
A method of quantifying the effect of noncondensable desorption on the forced flow of liquids in microchannels subject to a uniform heat flux has been developed. The model is based on the solution of the differential forms of the mass, momentum, energy and noncondensable species conservation equations assuming that the liquid is fully saturated with the noncondensable at the channel inlet. Parametric calculations for the conditions show that significant noncondensable desorption can take place in microchannel flow resulting in increased liquid velocities and enhanced heat transfer. Experiments were also performed with a 0.76 mm diameter microchannel using both fully degassed water and water saturated with air at the channel inlet. The measured heat transfer coefficients for the air-saturated data were significantly higher than for the fully degassed data in regions where the model predicts significant noncondensable desorption.
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