Experimental investigation of two-phase pressure drop in rough minichannels

Opole University of Technology, Opole 45-271, Mikołajczyka 5, Poland

^a Corresponding author: pawelwaclawczyk@onet.pl
Corresponding author: r.ulbrich@po.opole.pl

Abstract

Following the general tendency of miniaturization of devices in many branches of industry, smaller and smaller components are used. Mini channels are used to construct mini heat exchangers and mini reactors. Because of this fact, predicting two-phase pressure drops along the mini tube plays an important role already at the design stage. It defines the proper and safe operating conditions of such devices. It was decided to research this phenomena in five single mini channels and undertake a comparison of various correlations models reported in literature and check how the process of changing critical Reynolds value affects the conformity of the experimental data and results reported in literature. It was found that the Mishima-Hibiki model derived from literature offers the possibility of most accurate mathematical modelling. It was also found that changing critical Reynolds value because of mini channel roughness can significantly improve the accuracy of the existing correlations models e.g. for Lee-Lee model the improvement is equal to almost 9%.