The pressure drop characteristics of air–water bubbling flow for evaporative heat transfer

This paper presents a study on a novel water bubbling layer pressure drop and heat transfer experiment that was conducted to investigate the characteristics of pressure drop of air flow across the water bubbling layer. The attempt was to reduce the pressure drop while maintaining a higher value of the heat transfer coefficient. This type of heat transfer between water and merged tubes has potential application in evaporative cooling. To achieve the goal the pressure drop should be reduced by decreasing the bubble layer thickness through the water pump circulation. Pressure drops of air passing through the perforated plate and the water bubbling layer were measured for different heights of water bubbling layer, hole-plate area ratio of the perforated plate and the air velocity through the holes. Experimental data show that the increase of water bubbling layer height and air velocity both increase the pressure drop while the effect of the hole-plate area ratio of the perforated plate on the heat transfer coefficient is relatively complex. The measurements showed that even at a considerably lower height of water bubbling layer the heat transfer coefficient can exceed 5,000 W/m2-K. The heat transfer coefficients of 30 mm high water bubbling layer are higher than that of other higher water bubbling layers tested in the experiments