Pool boiling of nanoparticle-modified surface with interlaced wettability

Abstract

This study investigated the pool boiling heat transfer under heating surfaces with various interlaced wettability. Nano-silica particles were used as the coating element to vary the interlaced wettability of the surface. The experimental results revealed that when the wettability of a surface is uniform, the critical heat flux increases with the more wettable surface; however, when the wettability of a surface is modified interlacedly, regardless of whether the modified region becomes more hydrophilic or hydrophobic, the critical heat flux is consistently higher than that of the isotropic surface. In addition, this study observed that critical heat flux was higher when the contact angle difference between the plain surface and the modified region was smaller. © 2012 Hsu et al.