Factors influencing heat transfer mechanism in nucleate pool boiling: A comprehensive review with state of the art and future prospects

Heat dissipated using pool boiling processes has been gaining widespread popularity due to the rising demand for high heat dissipation in contemporary engineering applications such as electronics cooling and nuclear reactors. Its passive nature and the high heat transfer coefficient (HTC) associated with the two-phase cooling technique are the major contributors to their rising esteem among researchers. Heat transfer performance of pool boiling on an immersed heating element depends mainly upon surface characteristics, fluid properties, fluid–surface interactions, operating conditions, thermophysical properties, and orientation of the heating element. It is crucial for a thermal design engineer to have a clear understanding of the influence of these control parameters on pool boiling heat transfer performance characteristics to develop an efficient cooling device. This chapter provides a comprehensive review of the literature addressing the effect of these control parameters on the two most important heat transfer characteristics, i.e., critical heat flux (CHF) and HTC. In addition to assessing the change in behavior of CHF and HTC with these parameters, the authors have also included the underlying mechanisms responsible for altering these heat transfer characteristics during pool boiling in the present review.