Film boiling of an electrically insulating fluid in the presence of an electric field

This paper deals with the experimental and theoretical investigation of the influence of an electric field on the heat transfer rate during stable film boiling of the electrically insulating fluid FC-72. In particular the case of stable saturated film boiling from a horizontal plate is studied. The experiments show that the heat transfer rate increases +/-50% when an electric field of 27.3 kV/cm is applied. A new correlation for the heat transfer rate in the presence of an electric field based on the heat transfer model of Klimenko is derived in this paper. Therefore the behavior of the liquid-vapor interface is studied in more detail. This study shows that the electric field has a two fold effect on the interface. On the one hand the distance between adjacent bubbles decreases and on the other hand the bubbles elongate in the presence of the electric field. The new correlation is in good agreement with the experiments.