A critical review of recent investigations on flow pattern and heat transfer during flow boiling in micro-channels

Abstract

A summary of recent research on flow boiling in micro-channels is provided in this article. This review aims to survey and identify new findings arising in this important area, which may contribute to optimum design and process control of high performance miniature devices comprising extremely small channels. Several criteria for defining a micro-channel are presented at first and the recent works on micro-scale flow boiling are subsequently described into two parts including flow visualization and two-phase heat transfer. The results obtained from a number of previous studies show that the flow behaviours and heat transfer mechanisms in micro-channels deviate significantly from those in ordinarily sized channels. Future research with numerous aspects of flow boiling phenomena necessary to answer the fundamental questions is still required.