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International Journal of Thermal Sciences 50 (2011) 480e485

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International Journal of Thermal Sciences


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijts

Boiling heat transfer of nanouids: The effect of heating surface modication


Dongsheng Wen a, *, Michael Corr a, Xiao Hu a, b, Guiping Lin b
a
b

School of Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
School of Aeronautical Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, P.R China

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 7 March 2010
Received in revised form
27 October 2010
Accepted 27 October 2010
Available online 3 December 2010

This work reports a comparative study of nucleate boiling heat transfer with aqueous alumina nanouids
on two specially designed surfaces. The detailed surface characterization before and after boiling reveals
that the modication of heating surface geometries is mainly responsible for many contradictory results
reported in literature. The enhancement or deterioration of boiling heat transfer by nanouids is
dependent upon different surface modications that strongly affected by the relative size between
particles suspended in the liquid and the heating surface geometry, and their interactions. The surface
modication by nanoparticles is an inherent feature of nanouids, and would occur each time after boiling.
The experimental results would be affected by the number and frequency of the usage of boiling surfaces.
2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Nanoparticles
Nanouids
Boiling
Wetting
Surface property

1. Introduction
Nanouids are functional liquid suspensions containing particles that are smaller than 100 nm. With some enhanced properties,
they have wide potential application for intensifying heat and mass
transfer in a variety of systems. A considerable amount of effort has
been made to investigate the thermal behaviour of nanouids in
the last decade, such as effective thermal properties and their
applications under convective and boiling conditions. Though some
promising results are found for single phase convections, many
contradictive results are reported for boiling heat transfer with
nanouids. For instance when compared with boiling of pure uids,
signicant heat transfer enhancement was observed [1e5]; this
however contrasts signicantly to others where large heat transfer
deterioration was reported [6e9]. The results were very inconsistent even for the same nanoparticles under similar experimental
conditions. Not like the thermophysical properties such that the
thermal conductivity is always increased with particle concentrations, different trends have been extensively reported on the
inuence of particle concentrations on the boiling heat transfer
[10,11]. Meanwhile, a large number of studies reported different
levels of enhancement, from 10% to 400%, in the critical heat ux
(CHF) [10e14].

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 44 20 78823232; fax: 44 20 89831007.


E-mail address: d.wen@qmul.ac.uk (D. Wen).
1290-0729/$ e see front matter 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijthermalsci.2010.10.017

There are a few possible parameters affecting boiling heat


transfer with nanouids such as the morphological and thermophysical properties of nanoparticles and nanouids, the stability of
nanouids, the content of nanouids such as surfactants and ions,
and the deposition and interactions of nanoparticles with heating
surfaces [15]. A few studies have suggested the increase of CHF
values and the deterioration of boiling heat transfer under high
heat ux conditions might be related to the deposition of nanoparticles on the heating surface [8,10,16e18]. As boiling heat
transfer is very sensitive to surface characteristics especially the
number and shape of potential nucleate sites, any change in the
surface would probably result in different boiling behaviors.
Possible improvement in the surface wetting capability by particle
deposition might be responsible for the increase in CHF values. It is
noted that most of pool boiling experiments reported, especially
under high heat ux conditions, were conducted by resistive
heating wires acting as both heater and boiling surface
[12,13,19e21], which may not be representative of typical boiling
circumstances for plate heaters. The explanation on the surface
effect so far have been largely speculative, lacking quantitative
characterization of boiling surfaces, especially on the interaction of
nanoparticles, bubble nucleate cavities, and boiling surfaces. The
relative size between particles suspended in the liquid and potential nucleation sites, which should be an important parameter to
reect possible changes on nucleation sites, has not been examined
carefully.
Aiming to explain the apparent contradictive results of nucleate
boiling with nanouids, this work reports an experimental study on

D. Wen et al. / International Journal of Thermal Sciences 50 (2011) 480e485

two carefully fabricated plate heaters with quantitative characterization of boiling surfaces before and after boiling through an
atomic force microscopy (AFM), energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS) and scanning electronic microscopy (SEM).
A particular focus is laid on the modication of surface properties
and their subsequent inuence on nucleate boiling heat transfer.
2. Experiment
To avoid the inuence of surfactants or dispersants, which alone
would have a strong effect on the boiling process [22,23], Al2O3
nanouids are made freshly by dispersing dried a-alumina nanopowers into de-ionized water under ultrasonic agitation conditions, the usual two-step method. Three low concentrations of
alumina nanouids are formulated, 0.001%, 0.01% and 0.1%
concentration by volume. The ultrasonication duration for each
concentration is 2 h just before the start of boiling experiments. The
nanouids formulated are not permanently stable but can last for
a couple of hours without visible sedimentations, which resembles
a large body of nanouids studies reported in literature
[5e7,12,17,20,21]. Fig. 1a shows a SEM image of the alumina
nanoparticles, where the primary particles are spherical and have
a wide size distribution in the range of 20e150 nm. Fig. 1b shows an
in-situ size distribution of alumina particles in the suspending
liquid measured by the dynamic light scattering method using
Malver nanosizer, the real particle size in a nanouid. It clearly
illustrates a much larger size prole than that of dried particles as
captured by SEM. The particle size lies within 50e900 nm with an
average diameter of 405 nm, a rst peak at 370 nm, and a second
peak at w5 micrometers. The second peak area accounts for w6% of
all light scattered and will be the rst batch of particles deposited
onto the surface that interacts with potential nucleate sites.
We emphasis here the large differences in particle size proles
between those observed by SEM and those suspended in a liquid

481

medium, the real particle size in a nanouid. Many experiments


and analysis have shown that such a difference is common for all
nanouids formulated without proper stabilization and surface
modication [24]. Such a difference is understandable as dried
nanoparticles frequently appear in the form of agglomerates, some
of which, particularly those formed due to strong agglomerations
or sintering during the particle production process, are very difcult to break through mechanical forces such as ultrasonication,
milling and high-shearing. As a consequence, the in-situ particle
size in a liquid suspension will be much larger than the size of
primary particles as shown in Fig. 1a. For any nanouids applications, it is believed that an in-situ particle size prole in its host
medium will be a more suitable parameter to reect the particle
size, rather than the popularly-used primary particle size as characterized by electronic microscopes.
Pool boiling experiments are conducted on two plate boiling
surfaces, which are made of brass having a rectangular shape of 20
mm by 20 mm and a thickness of 10 mm. The heaters are cleaned
thoroughly in an ultrasonic bath and bonded carefully to a transparent high temperature Pyrex housing through a water proof, high
temperature resistant epoxy mould. The center of one side of the
boiling plate accommodates a f 6.7 mm cylindrical cartridge
heater (18 mm in length), which is controlled by a variable DC
power supply to provide heat. Three type-K thermocouples are
located 0.2 mm below the boiling surface, separated by a distance
of 2 mm starting from the center of the heater, and one is immersed
in the liquid pool to monitor the liquid temperature and to check if
saturation boiling is reached. The whole system is well insulated
except the top of the housing that is vented to the ambient. All
thermocouple readings are collected by a data acquisition system
(DAQ) through a multichannel amplier.
The experiment was conducted under atmospheric pressure,
and the saturation temperature was calculated based on it. The
thermocouples, after being installed on the heater, are calibrated by
the freezing and boiling temperature of water. The overall uncertainty of temperature measurement is controlled at 0.2 K, including
both the uncertainty of thermocouple reading and the losses
through the DAQ system. The input heat ux is calculated from the
input DC power supply minus some heat loss to the surroundings,
which is estimated as w5%. An overall uncertainty of 7% in the heat
ux is achieved in the experiments. The surface temperature is
derived from the average of three thermocouples, deducting by
a small temperature drop across the distance of 0.2 mm between
the thermocouples and boiling surface, calculated from the Fouriers law for a given heat ux. Within all experimental range, the
uncertainty of superheat falls within a band of 12%. The condence
level of all measurement is assessed as 90% in this work.
3. Result and discussion

Fig. 1. Characterization of particles through SEM and in-situ particle prole measured
by nanosizers.

Two boiling plates are manufactured with different surface


nishes. Fig. 2 shows the surface prole of the two surfaces, termed
as rough and smooth surface respectively. The detailed surface
geometry characterized by an AFM before and after boiling is
shown in Table 1. The average roughness values of the rough and
smooth surfaces are 420 nm and 25 nm respectively. Of particular
note though, the averaged roughness only gives an arithmetic
average of peak-to-peak values, which is not a proper parameter to
describe a boiling surface. Only some specially shaped cavities with
gas entrapment capability can be acted as active nucleate sites that
control different boiling behaviors.
In a typical experiment, nanouids are prepared freshly before
each experiment. To avoid nanoparticles contamination and
establish a reliable comparison, the experiments for DI water and
0.001% concentration of nanouids are conducted under exactly

482

D. Wen et al. / International Journal of Thermal Sciences 50 (2011) 480e485

Fig. 2. Two boiling surfaces before experiments.

the same experimental conditions on the two surfaces. DI water is


boiled rst and then the 0.001% nanouids. The results are shown
in Figs. 3 and 4. It is apparent that the 0.001% nanouids increase
the boiling heat transfer rate for the smooth surface, i.e., a two-fold
increase in the boiling heat transfer coefcient is observed under
low heat ux conditions. However this is not the case for the rough

surface, which produces nearly identical results for both 0.001%


nanouids and DI water.
The boiling surface is then removed, cleaned in DI water by an
ultrasonic device for three minutes and examined in details by the
AFM. Example AFM images before and after the rst boiling
experiments are illustrated in Fig. 5 with details listed in Table 1. It
is surprise to notice that layers of nanoparticles are deposited onto
the surface after boiling even under such low particle concentrations and low heat ux conditions. As the surface after boiling was
carefully cleaned before the AFM examination, these nanoparticles
appear to become an inherent part of the boiling surface and would
certainly modify subsequent boiling processes. The instability of
the nanouids, possible fouling and even sintering of nanoparticles
onto the surface during boiling should be responsible. We would
like to emphasis here that similar to most of other reported
experiments, the nanouids after boiling still look the same as
before, without any visible sedimentation. Considering the
common nanoparticles and common method of nanouid formation, we feel that that such surface modication may have been
occurred in many other boiling experiments with nanouids
reported. However due to a lack of quantitative analysis, it was
unclear about the level of particle deposition and surface modication, which increased the difculties for data comparison.
The difference in boiling behaviour can be further revealed by
examining microscopic details of the surface geometry before and
after boiling, as shown in Table 1. For the rough surface, the surface
geometry prole maintains nearly the same after nanouids
boiling, with similar peak-to-peak values. One sampled location has
slightly increased average roughness value while the other has
a reduced value. Considering the large in-situ particle size distribution, as shown in Fig. 1b, and the large peak-to-peak values (w3
microns) of the rough surface, it is plausible that in certain areas,
the deposition of smaller particles would make the surface
smoother while some other areas would become roughed.
However for the smooth surface, the peak-to-peak values and the
average height increase nearly three folds, and the averaged
roughness increases over 2 folds for both sampling locations after
the rst time boiling with nanouids. There is also a substantial
increase in the kurtosis value, which implies that the after-boiling
surface has sharper peaks with longer fatter tails. The appearance
of both negative and positive skewness values suggests that the
surface becomes more irregular after boiling with nanouids. From
these results, it is clear that the change of these surface parameters
would modify boiling surface characteristics. However it is unclear
at this stage if there is a direct linkage between the change of these
parameters and the boiling performance, especially the modication of active nucleation site and surface wettablity. To the authors
best knowledge, no such analysis has been performed before, and
we are still analyzing these AFM data.

Table 1
AFM characterization of surfaces before and after boiling experiments.
Rough surface

Smooth surface

Before boiling
Amount of sampling
Max (nm)
Min (nm)
Peak-to-peak, Sy (nm)
Ten point height, Sz (nm)
Average (nm)
Average roughness, Sa
Root mean square, Sq (nm)
Surface skewness, Ssk
Coefcient of kurtosis, ka

65536
2923.37
0
2923.37
1461.75
1319
421.628
518.867
0.306605
0.341002

After boiling
65536
2868.94
0
2868.94
1436.11
1230.06
425.918
522.179
0.289994
0.323515

45675
3213.51
19.6829
3193.83
1615.64
1436.06
332.939
440.499
0.476305
1.27137

Before boiling
32032
3223.15
299.7
2923.45
1757.89
1425.77
507.007
593.402
0.664552
0.61836

65536
300.267
0
300.267
148.894
117.289
27.0047
34.3611
0.321084
0.570419

After boiling
65536
249.561
0
249.561
122.099
109.027
21.5897
27.3331
0.009188
0.234917

55430
960.579
0
960.579
489.613
540.218
58.3021
79.2264
0.68981
2.38402

45368
919.593
43.416
876.177
482.477
360.612
52.527
69.9111
0.403099
3.49667

D. Wen et al. / International Journal of Thermal Sciences 50 (2011) 480e485

483

Fig. 3. Comparative boiling experiments on the smooth surface.

Though not in-depth, these surface morphology change before


and after boiling with nanouids could be understood by
comparing the relative in-situ particle size with the surface
geometry. For geometry with an average roughness of w25 nm
having peak-to-peak values of w300 nm, the nanouids with peaks
in 370 nm and 5 microns will no doubt have an overall increase in
the roughness after boiling. Although not a perfect parameter into
the boiling mechanism, such increased roughness will contribute to
the enhancement of boiling heat transfer as shown in Fig. 3. It is
apparent that the relative size between nanoparticles in a liquid
medium and boiling surface geometry plays a crucial role in
determining the heat transfer effect. Narayan et al. [17] proposed
a parameter, the ratio of primary particle size to the average
roughness of the surface, to differentiate boiling with nanouids
where they claimed that boiling heat transfer coefcient was
decreased for smooth surfaces, which is directly contradictive to
our ndings. Rather than the primary particle size, the in-situ
particle size in the liquid medium should be used to accurately
reect the interactions between particles and boiling surface.
Beside the size effect, the thermophysical properties of particles
and the heating surface will reect how strongly the particles will
be bonded to the heating surface. Such a surface modication
would certainly affect the number of active nucleation sites, solid
surface energy and the wettablity of liquids, all of which have
important roles in boiling heat transfer.
An elemental analysis is also conducted for the boiling surfaces
in a SEM equipped with an EDS detector as shown in Fig. 6. Both

Fig. 4. Comparative boiling experiments on the rough surface.

Fig. 5. AFM image of the rough surface before and after boiling with nanouids.

SEM image and EDS results clearly identify that agglomerated


alumina nanoparticles deposited onto the surface and become an
inseparable part of the heating surface. After nishing the experiments, the inner surface of the Pyrex housing is also cleaned by DI
water and re-examined, Fig. 7, which also reveals traces of alumina
nanoparticles. These results clearly show that not only deposit onto
the heating surface, nanoparticle deposition occurs on vertical
surfaces as well. Consequently, the proposed way of eliminating
nanoparticle deposition by altering the surface orientation by
Narayan et al. [25] would not work.
It is believed that the change of surface geometry is an inherent
feature of nanouids even for stable ones. The retaining and trapping of nanoparticles will occur when nanouids come in touch
with surfaces, irrespective of the surface orientation. The increase
in surface temperature by heating will increase the Van Der Waals
force that would accelerate particle entrapments. The situation
becomes intensied under boiling conditions where the rise of
bubbles and rewetting by surrounding uids after bubble departure
bring a constant supply of nanoparticles to the surface that

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D. Wen et al. / International Journal of Thermal Sciences 50 (2011) 480e485

Fig. 6. The scanning electron microscope image and chemical composition of a sample from the contaminated brass boiling plate (rough surface).

Fig. 7. The scanning electron microscope image and chemical composition of a sample from the contaminated Pyrex after boiling.

intensies nanoparticle deposition. For unstable nanouids as


chosen in this work, a macroscopic sedimentation would accelerate
the deposition process. Large particles especially those shown in
the second peak areas (Fig. 1b) will deposit rst. The relatively high
temperature of the heating surface makes strong adherence and
even sintering of nanoparticles onto the surface that modies
subsequent boiling processes. For single phase ow in relative large
channels, however, the heat transfer rate will not be affected
signicantly as the heat transfer is not sensitive to surface geometries, which has been evidenced by many observation of enhanced
convective heat transfer coefcient by nanouids [26,27]. For single
phase ow in microchannels where the surface roughness becomes
comparable to that of the channel dimension, we expect that
a strong surface effect will emerge.
After the comparative experiments, the nanoparticle concentration effect is illustrated. It is found that there is no solid
conclusion can be drawn about the concentration effect. For the
rough surface, all concentration curves are found to be similar,
which suggest that the dominant boiling heat transfer mechanism
is the modication of boiling surface, rather than the change of
thermophysical properties of different nanouids. For the smooth
surface, experiments show that a further increase in concentrations
results in a reduced heat transfer enhancement. The repeatability of
the boiling results with nanouids is found to be poor. In practice,
the boiling surface changes every time when nanouids are boiled
although the change is not as extreme as the rst time boiling with
nanouids. It is therefore impossible to have reliable repetitive
experiments based on only one boiling surface. Different experimental results shall be obtained, which may increase or decrease,
depending on the degree of surface modication and if such
modication is in favor of bubble generation. This shall explain
a number of experimental contradictions among different research
groups.

It should be noted that the current study is only focused on the


effect of nanoparticle deposition, and does not consider the
potential roles of nanoparticles suspended in the liquid, which
could affect the interfacial properties including surface tension and
wetting, and inuence boiling heat transfer consequently. Interested readers may nd further information from references
[28e30].
4. Conclusion
Detailed characterization reveals that the modication of
boiling surface geometries is a key element responsible for
contradictory reports on boiling heat transfer with nanouids in
literature. The enhancement or deterioration of boiling heat
transfer is dependent upon the relative size between particles
suspended in the liquid medium and the heating surface geometry,
and their interactions. Example experiments show that for the
smooth surface, the deposition of particles onto the heating surface
increases the surface roughness contributing to the increase in
nucleate boiling heat transfer; while for the rough surface, no
obvious change in the surface geometry is observed that results in
a similar boiling curve. The surface modication by nanoparticles is
found to be an inherent feature of nanouids that occurs each time
after boiling. The experimental results are affected by the number
and frequency of the usage of boiling surface. A quantitative
comparison of experimental results and the particle concentration
effect are difcult based on only one heating surface.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to extend their thanks to EPSRC for
nancial support under Grant EP/E065449/1.

D. Wen et al. / International Journal of Thermal Sciences 50 (2011) 480e485

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