Prediction of Critical Heat Flux in Tube Bundles With Crossflow

Abstract

Evaporators and boilers with flow across horizontal tube bundles are widely used in industries including refrigeration and chemical processing. As yet there is a lack of a well-verified correlation for predicting local or average CHF (critical heat flux) in such bundles. The available data and correlations are reviewed. The available methods for predicting bundle mean CHF were found to be too conservative. More realistic values of bundle average CHF are proposed based on published test data. The author's well-verified correlations for CHF on a single tube with the subcooled and saturated flow at zero quality across it are compared with test data for tubes in tube bundles together with other correlations. The author's correlations agree well with all data while the others fail for data other than their own. The results of the comparison are presented and discussed. The needs for further research are identified.