Study on the temperature distribution of heated falling liquid films

A 2-D theoretical model was derived to present the temperature distribution of falling liquid films flowing over a vertical heated/cooled plate with constant temperature. And the temperature gradients for different flow rates and fluids were also discussed for different liquid films. The temperature distributions for liquid films of water, ethanol aqueous solutions and glycerol aqueous solutions were experimentally investigated with a sensitive thermal imaging system. It is found that the surface temperature of a film flowing over a vertical heated solid plate has a characteristic relationship with the film flow distance. A lower flow rate of the film or a higher temperature of the wall generally leads to a higher surface temperature in the film inception. For films of glycerol aqueous solutions under the same heating conditions, a lower glycerol concentration causes a higher surface temperature of the film, due to the decrease of the liquid viscosity, whereas the ethanol concentration is found to have little influence on the temperature distribution of the film surface. Comparisons of the experimental data and the theoretical model show that the model can adequately describe the surface temperature distribution of a heated falling liquid film.