Using bulk micromachined structures to enhance pool boiling heat transfer

This paper presents the important results of enhancing the boiling heat transfer of the pressurized water reactors (PWRs) by using LIGA or LIGA-like techniques to add microstructures on the surface of heater elements. The heater elements were made of 10 mm × 80 mm silicon strips with different in-line square micro-pin-fin configurations of 200 μm fin width, 35 μm fin height, and different inter-fin spacing values of 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000 μm and infinity. The experiments were conducted in de-ionized water at the atmospheric pressure. The input power, heater temperature, steam generation rate and video images of boiling phenomena were continuously recorded. Their relationships was studied and used to evaluate the total boiling heat transfer performance. The optimized microstructures can then be mass-fabricated on PWR tubes by using LIGA or LIGA-like technology. The experimental results suggest that by adding micro-sized in-line pin-fin arrays on heater surface and modifying heater surface morphology, the boiling process can be greatly enhanced through the improvements of vapor nucleation and vapor evolution processes at heater surface, which yields a low wall superheat and achieves a higher boiling heat transfer efficiency. The video images showed that the bubble nucleation sites are located immediately on top of each micro-pin fins. At current experimental setup, the 200 μm-spacing heater has the highest steam generation efficiency.