Experimental Investigation Of A Novel Evaporator With Thin Film Evaporation

Due to the rising cost of energy and the decreasing availability of energy resources, highly efficient heat transfer systems play more and more important role in the development of modern marine engineering. In the current investigation, an innovative evaporator using thin film evaporation is developed. Thin film evaporation can achieve higher evaporating heat transfer coefficient than conventional nucleate boiling heat transfer. The new evaporator investigated herein utilizes sintered copper particles for micro-structured evaporating surface, which can significantly increase the thin film region for higher evaporating heat transfer coefficient. A new approach fabricating sintered micro-structured wicks is developed which can help to fabricate the uniform wicks on the evaporating surface. In order to demonstrate the heat transfer performance of the newly developed evaporator using thin film evaporation, an evaporator by the nucleate boiling is developed for comparison. The experimental results show that the evaporator using thin film evaporation can help to increase the heat transfer performance. The investigation can result in a better understanding heat transfer mechanisms occurring in an evaporator using thin film evaporation.