Saturated Pool Boiling in Microgravity in ARIEL Experiment

The ARIEL experiment was flown on May 2005 aboard of Foton-M2 satellite and was dedicated to the study of nucleate boiling of dielectric fluids on a flat plate, in the presence of an external electric field or less. The experiment was run for four days, however the unexpected high vapor production caused the early exhaustion of the nitrogen of the pressure compensation system. The experiment runs were continued in off-nominal conditions, at subatmospheric pressure, allowing for testing saturated pool boiling in microgravity. The results reported herein show that saturated pool boiling in microgravity can occur without originating immediately surface dryout. The application of a moderate electric field increases the surface wetting and decrease the size of departing bubbles. For the highest applied electric field, nucleation is suppressed and only single phase heat transfer takes place, at least in the power range investigated here, with degradation of the performance.