Applicability of "Chen" Type Methods for Predicting Boiling Heat Transfer in Mini-Channels

Chen correlation and other correlations based on Chen correlation are the most commonly used methods for predicting the flow boiling heat transfer. However,some recent researches show that great errors are caused when these correlations are used for mini-channels. Based the experimental results from Yan and Lin et al.,a new database including 2505 data for 11 liquids were built,covering diameter from 0.21 to 6.05mm. The applicability of these methods for prediction of the flow boiling heat transfer in mini-channels was evaluated. The results show that the Chen method and the Chen-type correlations are not quite suitable for mini-channels; the correlation for calculating the nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficient in Chen correla-tion is no longer applicable when the vapor quality is high.