Liquid and Flow Boiling Heat Transfer Inside a Copper Foam

This paper presents the experimental measurements carried out during liquid and flow boiling heat transfer of R1234ze(E) and R134a inside a high porosity copper foam. The test section with a 5 pores per linear inch (PPI) foam, is electrically heated from the bottom and it is instrumented with 20 thermocouples to monitor the wall temperature distribution at different imposed heat fluxes, saturation temperatures, vapour qualities, and refrigerant mass flow rates. The experimental measurements were conducted in a new experimental facility built at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale of the Università di Padova especially designed to study either liquid or two-phase heat transfer processes for electronic thermal management applications.