Transport in Microchannels - A Critical Review

Boiling and Evaporation in Small Diameter Channels

“…Since work on this paper was initiated, several review papers have appeared that deal with microchannel heat transfer and pressure drop [3][4][5][6]. These papers confirm that this is indeed a "hot" topic.…”

“…Below we will consider the steady-state operating conditions, but not start-up or shutdown conditions. First, we note that in a phase-change-controlled thermal management system, the energy associated with phase change will account for the majority of the heat removal Q = M xh lg (5) where x is the change in quality over the length of the channel and h lg is the latent heat of vaporization for the coolant. For applications where the entire channel is in the subcooled boiling mode, there would be no change in equilibrium quality.…”

A composite heat transfer correlation for saturated flow boiling in small channels

“…While single-phase flow in small channels can easily be described with equations developed for conventional-sized tubes, microchannel flow boiling is significantly affected by the confinement of bubbles [7][8][9][10].…”

Investigation of heat transfer in rectangular microchannels

“…Recent reviews of the state of the art [18,19] indicate that before predictions of flow and heat transfer rates in microchannels can be made with confidence, careful experiments are needed to resolve the discrepancies in the literature and to provide practical information on the design of microchannel heat sinks.…”