Visualization of flow boiling of liquid nitrogen in a vertical mini-tube

The flow boiling patterns of liquid nitrogen in a vertical mini-tube with an inner diameter of 1.931 mm are visualized with a high-speed digital camera. The superficial gas and liquid velocities are in the ranges of 0.01–26.5 m/s and 0.01–1.2 m/s, respectively. Four typical flow patterns, namely, bubbly, slug, churn and annular flow are observed. Some interesting scenes about the entrainment and liquid droplet deposition in the churn and annular flow, and the flow reversal with the indication of negative pressure drop, are also presented. Based on the visualization, the two-phase flow regime maps are obtained. Compared with the flow regime maps for gas–water flow in tubes with similar hydraulic diameters, the region of slug flow in the present study reduces significantly. Correspondingly, the transition boundary from the bubbly flow to slug flow shifts to higher superficial gas velocity, and that of churn to annular flow moves to lower superficial gas velocity. Moreover, time-averaged void fraction is calculated by quantitative image-digitizing technique and compared with various prediction models. Finally, three kinds of oscillations with long-period and large-amplitude are found, possible explanation for the oscillations is given by comparing the instantaneous flow images with the data of pressure, mass flux and temperature recorded synchronously.