Abstract:
Application of electric fields demonstrates great promise as an active heat transfer
enhancement technique. Here, we study experimentally some characteristics of isolated
bubbles such as bubble departure diameter, nucleation rate (frequency), and density of
nucleation sites under the influence of an electric field In the nucleate pool boiling regime,
isolated bubbles were recorded with a high-speed video camera at a rate of 1000 frames per
second.
The quantitative and qualitative analyses of bubble characteristics, and latent heat transfer
concluded that at a constant heat flux condition in "the isolated bubble regime", the "density
of nucleation sites" was a very sensitive boiling parameter when electric field varied. The
latent heat contribution varied proportional with the density of nucleation sites when heat flux
and/or electrode voltage varied. This further simplifies the complex task of modeling of the
EHD enhanced pool boiling heat transfer in the isolated bubble regime.
