Experimental investigation on narrow gap heat transfer with porous media under downward-facing horizontal heated surface Original Research Article

An experimental study of horizontal narrow gap heat transfer of porous media under a round downward-facing heated plate has been carried out, using water as the working fluid. The boiling curves are obtained with different gap size, plate diameter and solid spherules. The results show that the heat transfer increases significantly with porous media in the gap especially under boiling condition, and the occurrence of pool boiling crisis would be brought forward when the gap size is very small. The results also indicate that the heat transfer in horizontal narrow gap can be enhanced by increasing the ratio of gap size to plate diameter and using porous media with high thermal conductivity. Based on the mechanism of heat transfer of porous media, the correlations for natural convection and nucleate boiling are proposed to predict the heat flux.