Flow boiling heat transfer at low flux conditions in a domestic refrigerator evaporator

This paper investigates the flow boiling heat transfer in a typical domestic refrigerator evaporator with horizontal flow, frequent bends and a non-circular cross-section. The mass flux was varied between 21 and 43 kg/m2 s, the heat flux between 1 and 5 kW/m2 and the vapour quality between 0.2 and 0.8. In spite of a predicted stratified to wavy-stratified flow pattern complete tube perimeter wetting was believed to occur except for the lowest mass flux and for positions upstream of the first bend. It was concluded that the bends helped wetting the tube perimeter. The experimental data revealed heat transfer coefficients higher than predicted with conventional correlations. This was suggested to be explained by thin film evaporation at a perimeter repeatedly wetted by liquid slugs. A simple correlation based on the pure convective part of the Shah correlation [3] was derived from the experimental data. The mean deviation of this was 16.9% compared to Shah's 54.7%.