a b s t r a c tIn this work, we investigate experimentally how the heat transfer in a laminar flow can be enhanced by using a partially miscible binary liquid-liquid mixture undergoing spinodal decomposition. A mixture of acetone-hexadecane is quenched in a micro heat exchanger to induce spinodal decomposition. The heat transfer rate is enhanced by self-induced convective effects sustained by the free energy liberated during phase separation. We report a heat-transfer augmentation of up to 150% when phase separation occurs in microchannels. Since acetone and hexadecane are immiscible below a critical temperature of 27°C, to obtain their spinodal decomposition the mixture inlet temperature are above 27°C and the heat exchangers wall are well below. We measure the heat transfer with a feedback method instead of a direct measure. To validate this measuring technique we carefully verify the energy balance. We fabricated a copper single-channel heat sink and two different types of multi-channel array. The single-channel exchanger allows us to visualize the induced convection. The arrays of microchannels promise to achieve very high heat transfer coefficients with small flow rate.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.