Status of prediction methods for critical heat fluxes in mini and microchannels

Saturated critical heat flux (CHF) is an important issue during flow boiling in mini and microchannels. To determine the best prediction method available in the literature, 2996 data points from 19 different laboratories have been collected since 1958. The database includes nine different fluids (R-134a, R-245fa, R-236fa, R-123, R-32, R-113, nitrogen, CO2 and water) for a wide range of experimental conditions. This database has been compared to 6 different correlations and I theoretically based model. For predicting the non-aqueous fluids, the theoretical model by Revellin and Thome [Revellin, R., Thome, J.R., 2008. A theoretical model for the prediction of the critical heat flux in heated microchannels. Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer 51, 1216-1225] is the best method. It predicts 86% of the CHF data for non-aqueous fluids within a 30% error band. The data for water are best predicted by the correlation by Zhang et al. [Zhang, W., Hibiki, T., Mishima, K., Mi, Y., 2006. Correlation of critical heat flux for flow boiling of water in minichannels. Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer 49, 1058-1072]. This method predicts 83% of the CHF data for water within a 30% error band. Some suggestions have also been proposed in this paper for the future studies. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.