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Nucleate Boiling and Bubble Growth

This document discusses factors that affect nucleate boiling and bubble growth, including surface material, roughness, liquid properties, pressure, and agitation. It also examines the relationship between surface tension and bubble shape, and describes the forces and equations governing bubble growth. Critical diameter is the maximum size a bubble can reach before detaching, and is determined by surface tensions at the liquid-vapor and liquid-solid interfaces, contact angle, and density difference between the liquid and vapor.

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AjinkyaKarlekar
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99 views

Nucleate Boiling and Bubble Growth

This document discusses factors that affect nucleate boiling and bubble growth, including surface material, roughness, liquid properties, pressure, and agitation. It also examines the relationship between surface tension and bubble shape, and describes the forces and equations governing bubble growth. Critical diameter is the maximum size a bubble can reach before detaching, and is determined by surface tensions at the liquid-vapor and liquid-solid interfaces, contact angle, and density difference between the liquid and vapor.

Uploaded by

AjinkyaKarlekar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Nucleate Boiling and Bubble Growth

Factors affecting Nucleate Boiling :-


a) The heat transfer due to boiling depends large on material
of heating surface.
b) It also depends upon roughness of surface . Rough surface
gives better results as compared to smooth surface.
c) It also depends lot on liquid properties. The liquid with high
viscosity increases bubble size and thus frequency of bubble
formation and heat transfer decreases.
d) With increase in agitation, heat transfer increases.
e) The heat transfer increases with increase in pressure but only
up to the point of critical flux.
Effect of surface tension on bubble growth
The surface tension of liquid shows the wetting capability of it.
If the surface tension is low, the liquid completely wets the
surface and bubble formed is oval in shape as shown in fig.(i).
In this case bubble will be pushed upwards in the liquid easily.
The liquid having intermediate surface tension partially wets
the surface and complete bubble will not form as shown in
fig.(ii). The liquid with high surface tension keeps the surface
unwetted and no formation of bubble is there. The heat
Transfer will be least in this case fig(iii). Due to this reason,
Sometimes agent has been added into liquid to reduce surface
tension.
Figure : Various bubble shapes in boiling phenomenon
Bubble growth and Critical diameter of bubble
As the excess temperature increases, bubble formation and
growth increases at various nucleation sites. The mechanism of
Bubble growth is explained as:
Considering a spherical bubble of radius r, which splits into two
halves as shown in figure. If the bubble is in thermal equilibrium,
liquid pressure force on the bubble will be equal to surface
tension force .
Figure : Forces acting on bubble
πr2 (pv–pl) = 2πrσ
or
pv – pl = 2σ (1)
r
Where,
pv is vapour pressure inside the bubble
pl is liquid pressure outside the bubble
σ is surface tension at liquid vapour interface
As the liquid and vapour both are in superheated condition, using
clayperon equation as,
dp = hfg dT or dp = p hfg dT
p RT2 RT T
Where hfg is latent heat of vapourization and R is characteristic gas constant.
Now, for perfect gas
p= ρvRT or ρv = p , where ρv is density of vapour
RT
dp = ρv = hfg
dT T
or
pv – pl = ρv hfg = p hfg (2)
Tv – Tsat Tsat 2
RT sat
Where , Tv is the temperature of vapour inside the bubble
Tsat is the saturation temperature
Using equations (1) and (2) we get
pv – pl = 2σ = (Tv – Tsat) p. hfg
r 2 (3)
RT sat
Tv –Tsat = 2σ RT2sat
r p. hfg
If (Tl –Tsat ) > (Tv –Tsat ) radius of bubble will grow, otherwise it
will collapse. To find the diameter of bubble at the time of
detachment considering below figure.

Critical diameter of bubble


Where,

σlv is surface tension at liquid vapour interface.


σls is surface tension at liquid solid interface.
σvs is surface tension at vapour solid interface.

β is angle between σlv, σls and Dcr is maximum or critical diameter of


bubble.

The buoyancy force on bubble will be (ρl - ρv) g.


The critical diameter of bubble

D cr = [σlv, σls, σvs, β,( ρ l - ρ v )g]


By using dimensional analysis , we get

Dcr = C. β σlv σlv


(4)
σls (ρl - ρv) g

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