Enhancemet of flow boiling heat transfer in pHEMA/pPFDA coated microtubes with longitudinal variations in wettability

Flow boiling heat transfer was investigated in stainless steel hypodermic microtubes, whose surfaces were enhanced by gradient crosslinked polyhydroxyethylmethacrylate (pHEMA)/polyperfluorodecylacrylate (pPFDA) coatings thereby offering variations in wettability along the surface as well as high porosity. The initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) method was implemented for coating the inner walls of the microtubes with an inner diameter of 502 μm, and deionized water was used as the working fluid. Experimental results were obtained from the coated microtubes, where one end corresponded to the pHEMA (hydrophilic) coated part and the other end was the most hydrophobic location with the pPFDA (hydrophobic) coating so that wettability varied along the length of the microtube. The results of both the hydrophobic and hydrophilic inlet cases were compared to their plain surface counterparts at the mass flux of 9500 kg/m2s. The experimental results showed a remarkable increase in boiling heat transfer with the coatings. The highest heat transfer coefficients were attained for the pHEMA coated (hydrophobic inlet and hydrophilic outlet) outlet case with a maximum heat transfer enhancement ratio of ∼64%. The reason for the enhanced heat transfer with the coated microtubes can be attributed to the increased nucleation site density and bubble release as well as enhanced convection and bubble motion near the surface due to the variation in wettability along the length. The results proved that gradient pHEMA/pPFDA coatings can be utilized as a viable surface enhancement method in microscale cooling applications.