Experimental investigation of dryout of propane in uniformly heated single vertical mini-channels

This article presents dryout results of propane in single vertical circular minichannels made of stainless steel with internal diameters of 1.70 min and 1.224 mm. The heat flux is increased in steps up to occurrence of dryout. The effects of different parameters such as mass flux, saturation temperature, vapour quality and internal diameter on the dryout are investigated. The results show that the dryout heat flux increases with the increase in mass velocity, with the decrease of vapour quality and with the increase of internal diameter. Almost no effect of saturation temperature on dryout heat flux is observed. Generalised CHF correlations developed for macro and micro scale from the literature are also compared with the experimental results. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.