Applied Thermal Engineering xxx (2016) xxxxxx

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Research Paper

Experimental study of falling film evaporation heat transfer on

superhydrophilic horizontal-tubes at low spray density
Yi Zheng, Xuehu Ma , Yun Li, Rui Jiang, Kai Wang, Zhong Lan, Qianqing Liang
Institute of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning Province 116024, China

h i g h l i g h t s

The superhydrophilic surfaces are prepared with contact angle close to 0.

The operating range of falling film evaporation is greatly extended.

Superhydrophilic modification enhances the heat transfer coefficients at low flow rates.

The heat transfer performance is about 2 times higher than that of the stable region.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 30 November 2015
Revised 28 June 2016
Accepted 28 July 2016
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Falling film evaporation
Horizontal tube
Superhydrophilic surface
Heat transfer enhancement
Low spray density

a b s t r a c t
This paper presents a series of experiments concerning heat transfer in a vertical row of horizontal-tube
falling film evaporator. By visualization and heat transfer experiments, the effects of hydrophilic modification on the inter-tube flow patterns and evaporation heat transfer performance on different tubes, the
superhydrophilic, hydrophilic and plain tubes, were investigated. The visualization results indicated that
four flow patterns, droplet, droplet/jet, jet and jet/sheet mode was achieved in this study and the hydrophilic modification has little effect on flow mode transition. Experiments have been indicated that the
superhydrophilic and hydrophilic tubes were completely wetted while the plain tubes were partially
wetted at low spray density. The heat transfer results demonstrated that superhydrophilic tubes could
maintain a high heat transfer coefficient at a wide range of flow rates (Res from 60 to 700). While, high
enhancement was achieved at low spray density, at which the plain tube was not be wetted. When Res
reached 350, three surfaces had the similar heat transfer performance. Simultaneously, the heating water
inlet temperature had little effect on heat transfer coefficient for superhydrophilic tubes and had a negative influence on plain tubes and hydrophilic tubes at low spray density.
2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Falling film evaporators, also known as spray evaporator, have
been widely used in the petrochemical industry, desalination processes, ocean thermal energy conversion system, refrigerator and
air condition system. This kind of evaporators has a rather high
heat transfer coefficient with small temperature differences. In
past several decades, a lot of experiments and theoretical analysis
were carried out in terms of the falling film flow pattern and the
heat transfer performance [14]. Chun and Seban [5] and Chyu
and Bergles [6] experimentally and theoretically investigated the
evaporation heat transfer for liquid water film. Hoke and Chen
[7] presented the theoretical analysis of mass transfer in evaporat-

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: xuehuma@dlut.edu.cn (X. Ma).

ing falling liquid film mixtures and derived an analytical solution

for the asymptotic Sherwood number on the assumption of constant mass flux at the interface. Xu et al. [8] studied the effects
of liquid load, evaporation temperature and tube diameter on the
falling film evaporation, and found that the increase of spray density benefited to the total heat transfer coefficient.
The previous reports showed that the unwetted area was
unavoidable due to the effects of surface tension and the liquid film
distribution at low spray density. The appearance of dry spots may
deteriorate heat transfer and cause local overheating [9]. Many
enhancement methods have been employed to restrict the appearance of dry spots. The addition of nano-particle or surfactants to
the solutions was a very common approach to enhance the solution wettability [10]. Porous tubes were also used to improve the
liquid spreading and enhance the heat transfer using the capillary
effect [11,12]. Kroglu et al. [12] studied the tube row effects of a
sintered microscale porous-layer coating on solution wetting and

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2016.07.177
1359-4311/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Y. Zheng et al., Experimental study of falling film evaporation heat transfer on superhydrophilic horizontal-tubes at low
spray density, Appl. Therm. Eng. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2016.07.177

Y. Zheng et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering xxx (2016) xxxxxx

Nomenclature
D
g
Ga
h
k
L
R
Re
T
Q

Sp
Hp
sat
sh
tot
t
cp
L
G

diameter [mm]
gravitational acceleration [m s2]
modified Galileo number
heat transfer coefficient [W m2 K1]
thermal conductivity [W m1 K1]
test tube length [mm]
thermal resistance [K W1]
Reynolds number
temperature [C]
heat flux [W]

superhydrophilic tube
hydrophilic tube
saturation
superheat
total
tube
specific heat at constant pressure
liquid
gas

Greeks

Subscripts
ave
averaged
eva
evaporation
h
heating fluid
s
spray fluid
i
inner or inlet
o
outer or outlet
Pl
plain tube

l
q
r

solution mass flow rate per unit length and per side
[kg m1 s1]
dynamic viscosity [m Pa s]
density [kg m3]
surface tension [kg s2]

Droplet to droplet=jet : Re 0:074 Ga0:302

anism for thermocapillary breakdown, resulting from lateral flow

diversion induced by a Marangoni effect associated with temperature gradients in the falling film.
The decrease of the contact angle can not only reduce the minimum spray density to restrict the appearance of dry spots but also
increase the critical heat flux of dry sports formation. According to
this theory, Kim and Kang [21] increased the surface wettability
using plasma method. The experiments showed that the tube treated with hydrophilic surface exhibited superior evaporation heat
transfer performance compared with that of the same kind of
untreated tube.
Although many attempts have been made to enhance the heat
transfer coefficient of horizontal evaporator, few researches were
published to research the effects of wettability on the horizontaltube, falling-film evaporator. In this study, the different hydrophilic tubes were prepared by two chemical etching methods to
prevent the evaporators from the local dry-out and partial solution
wetting, especially at low spray density. This paper also discussed
the effect of wettability on flow pattern and heat transfer performance by using three different wettability tubes, superhydrophilic
hydrophilic and plain tubes.

Droplet=jet to jet : Re 0:096 Ga0:301

2. Experimental setup and procedure

Jet to jet=sheet : Re 1:414 Ga0:233

Jet=sheet to sheet : Re 1:448 Ga0:236

found that heat transfer performance could be enhanced up to

100% at the lowest solution flow rates due to capillary driving liquid spreading and the promotion of thin-film evaporation at the
menisci in the porous coating. Kroglu et al. [13] found that the
oxidized tubes always showed higher heat transfer rates than the
plain tubes and outperformed the porous-layer coated tubes for
higher solution flow rates, which was attributed to less thermal
resistance of the oxidized tubes due to better surface wetting,
and thinner liquid layer.
Hu and Jacobi [14,15] studied the flow patterns of the fallingfilms using plain tubes with water, ethylene glycol, hydraulic oil,
a water/ethylene glycol mixture and alcohol, and obtained the
falling-film transitions mode maps. The flow patterns of the
falling-films had also been studied by using enhanced tubes
[16,17]. The flow patterns were categorized into main modes (droplet, jet, and sheet) and intermediate flow modes (droplet/jet and
jet/sheet) depending on the spray density. Hu and Jacobi [14]
found that the transition Re was related with the Ga number, and
the mode transitions could be identified by:

where the modified Ga and Re were defined as follows.

Ga

qr3
qud
Re
l4 g
l

The onset of local dryout can be ascribed to heat flux and film
flow rate macroscopically. However, from the point of microscopic
view, it can be interpreted by taking account of surface tension,
thermocapillary, evaporation, and disjoining pressure [18]. Hartley
and Murgatroyd [19] studied the criterion for the break-up of liquid film using force balance mode and obtained the relationship
between contact angle and minimum spray density. Combined
with the force balance model, Bryan et al. [20] explored the mech-

2.1. Surfaces preparation and characterization

Copper tubes were used with outer diameters, Do = 15.9 mm,
inner diameters, Di = 10 mm, and lengths, L = 250 mm as the test
samples for the experiments. Each tube was polished with emery
paper (#2000) to clean the oxidation layer. And then cleaned in
an ultrasonic bath with acetone for 10 min and rinsed with ethanol, isopropylalcohol, and deionized (DI) water. The tubes were
then swept with clean nitrogen gas to remove water on the surface.
The two chemical etching methods were prepared to obtain the
surfaces with different wettabilities. The superhydrophilic surfaces
were made by a strong oxidant, and micro/nanostructure was
formed by immersing the cleaned tubes into a hot (96 3 C) alkaline solutions composed of NaClO2, NaOH, Na3PO412H2O, and DI
water (3.75:5:10:100 wt%) for 20 min [22]. The hydrophilic surfaces were acquired by a weak oxidant. After cleaning, the tubes
were immersed in a NaOH (1 M) at 60 C for 24 h. In addition,
the plain tubes were used as a reference.

Please cite this article in press as: Y. Zheng et al., Experimental study of falling film evaporation heat transfer on superhydrophilic horizontal-tubes at low
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The micro/nanostructure was characterized by the images from

a Scanning Electron Microscope (KYKY2800B China and Quanta200, FEI, Holland). The contact angle was measured with a contact angle meter (OCAH200, Data physics, Germany) at ambient
temperature based on the sessile drop method. The size of the
water droplet was about 4 ll. The average contact angle value
was obtained by measuring 5 times at different locations of the
same sample.
2.2. Experimental procedure
An experimental setup was built to investigate the solution
wetting and compare the heat transfer performance. Fig. 1 showed
the schematic diagram of the experimental setup, which was composed of three parts: evaporation system, vacuum and cooling system, and heating system.
2.2.1. Evaporation system
The evaporation system mainly consisted of evaporation chamber, pre-heater I, canned motor pump, cooler and solution reservoir. During the experiments, water was first heated in the
stainless steel solution reservoir to 5 K below the saturation temperature at the specified pressure, and then pumped into the preheater I where the liquid was heated to nearly saturation
temperature by electrical heater. Finally, water was passed
through a flow meter to the evaporation chamber. The evaporation
chamber was composed of a lucid acrylic cylinder with an outer
diameter of 200 mm and the thickness of 10 mm. In test section,
the water was fed into distributor from two opposite directions.
The spray water distributor, 21.6 mm diameter and 400 mm
length, had 39 holes of 1.2 mm diameter drilled in a row with a
spacing of 6.35 mm. At the same time, to insure the solution could
be uniformly distributed on the test tube, the solution dispenser
was treated into superhydrophilic using the oxide etching method.
The water distributor and horizontal tubes were vertically aligned
so that the solution fluid could drip along the tubes. The distances
between the solution distributor and the upper test tube and
between the test tubes are equal, 19 mm. The excess solution fluid

was collected at the bottom of the evaporator chamber and entered

into the solution reservoir. In addition, a plate heat exchanger was
used as auxiliary cooler to maintain the solution liquid into the
reservoir at a specific temperature.
2.2.2. Vacuum and cooling system
The vacuum and cooling system consisted of vacuum pump and
condenser. The vacuum pressure in the evaporation system during
the heat transfer experiment was maintained by constantly evacuating vapor in the chamber. The chamber pressure was regulated
by a control valve, and was maintained at 15 0.1 kPa. The vapor
produced in the evaporation system was condensed by the condenser, which was a coiled tube heat exchanger tube outer diameter 8 mm. The condensate was drained to the solution reservoir to
ensure the system stability.
2.2.3. Heating system
The heating system had three sections, heating water reservoir,
pre-heater II and centrifugal pump. As experiments proceed, water
was heated by electrical heating in the container. A pre-heater
installed at the inlet of the evaporation, could maintain the heat
liquid temperature at special point. For increasing the heat transfer
capacity, a concentric-tube design was used and the schematic diagram was showed in Fig. 2. During the experiments, the heating
fluid flowed in the annulus side of the tubes.
The system temperatures were measured by 12 T-type thermocouples with uncertainty of 0.05 C. All T-type thermocouples
used in the experiments were calibrated in high-precision
constant-temperature bath (FLUKE9171, America). The calibration
temperature ranged from 20 C to 100 C. The electrical signals
(voltage) of all the thermocouples were recorded and collected
by data acquisition system (Agilent34970A, America).
2.3. Data reduction
The heat loss from the system to the surrounding during the
heat transfer experiment was neglected because of fully insulated.
The Re of the solution fluid flow was defined as:

Fig. 1. Schematic of experimental setup for horizontal falling film heat exchanger.

Please cite this article in press as: Y. Zheng et al., Experimental study of falling film evaporation heat transfer on superhydrophilic horizontal-tubes at low
spray density, Appl. Therm. Eng. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2016.07.177

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And the temperature of tube wall was obtained by:

T t;o T h;ave  Q h Rh Rt

The evaporation heat transfer coefficients for the test tubes

were obtained from the heat transfer rate of the heating fluid
and wall superheat (DTsh), which was given by:

heva
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of concentric-tube.

Res

4C

1

1

where the C [kg m s ] was the spray density per tube length and
per side of tube.
The Re of the heating fluid flow was defined as:

Reh

quh Di  D1
lh

The evaporation heat flux, surface superheat and evaporation

heat transfer coefficient were calculated by the temperatures measured by the T-type thermocouples. The heat flux from the heating
water to the solution water was calculated by:

Q h mcp T i  T o h

In the case of the evaporation of water, the temperature of the

gas-liquid interface was approximately viewed as the vapor saturation temperature due to final equilibrium state of vapor and liquid phase.
where the wall superheat (DTsh) was defined by:

DT sh T t;o  T sat

Q
ADT sh

10

The total thermal resistance, the convection thermal resistance

of the heating water, the conduction thermal resistance of the copper tube wall (Rt), and the evaporation resistances Reva, were determined respectively as follows:

Rtot Rh Rt Reva

11

The conduction thermal resistance of the outer tube wall was

calculated by:

Rt

lnDo =Di
2pkt 2Lt;o

12

The convective thermal resistance of the heating fluid flowing at

the annulus side of the concentric tube was given by:

Rh

1
hh pDi 2Lt;o

13

where the convective heat transfer coefficient were obtained from

the empirical correlations [23,24].
The evaporation thermal resistance Reva was obtained from the
heat flux of the heating fluid and wall superheat (DTsh), which was
given by:

Reva

DT sh
Qh

14

The uncertainties of the calculated values for the experiment

are listed in Table 1.
Table 1
Averaged experimental uncertainties.

3. Results and discussions

Parameters

Uncertainty

Pressure (Pa)
Temperature (C)
Length (mm)
Solution fluid flow rate (L h1)
Heating fluid flow rate (L h1)
Heat flux (W)
Heating transfer coefficient (W m2 K1)
Reva (K W1)
Rh (K W1)

0.25%
0.05 C
0.05 mm
1%
2%
14.17%
12.60%
15.82%
8.67%

(a) powerful chemical etching method

3.1. Micro/nanostructure of surfaces

Fig. 3 showed the SEM images of superhydrophilic and hydrophilic surfaces. For the superhydrophilic tubes, a great number of
nano-grass was formed during the etching process. That nanograss covered the entire tube and turned the tube from shinny copper to dark black, as showed in Fig. 3(a). When the water dropped
onto the surface, the water rapidly spread and wetted the surface.

(b) weak chemical etching method

Fig. 3. SEM images of copper sample treated by different chemical etching methods.

Please cite this article in press as: Y. Zheng et al., Experimental study of falling film evaporation heat transfer on superhydrophilic horizontal-tubes at low
spray density, Appl. Therm. Eng. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2016.07.177

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Table 2
The critical Re of flow pattern transition.

Superhydrophilic tubes
Hydrophilic tubes
Plain tubes
Hu [15]

(a) Superhydrophilic tube

27.8

(b) Hydrophilic tube

43.7

(c) Plain tube

Fig. 4. Images of experimental tube and contact angle.

As found in Fig. 4, the contact angle using strong chemical etching

method was close to zero.
Fig. 3(b) showed the image of the hydrophilic tube obtained by
a weak chemical etching method. It can be found that the surface
was covered by a uniform reddish layer. The microstructures were
relatively smooth as compared with that of the superhydrophilic
surface. The static angle was 27.8 which was higher than that of
the superhydrophilic surface.
The contact angle of plain surfaces with polishing to mirror was
about 43.7, which also was hydrophilic but clearly weaker than
two chemical etching surfaces.
3.2. Visual observation of flow pattern
Falling-film tube flow modes were investigated for the three
kinds of tubes with Res ranging from 40 to 700 at the temperature
of 20 C and atmospheric pressure. For three different tubes, as the
increase of flow rate, droplet, droplet/jet, jet and jet/sheet, four
typical flow patterns were obtained. To get higher precise, the
small range rotameter was adopted, so the sheet mode was not
found. It was found that liquid droplets dripped at a very low frequency from the bottom of the horizontal tube at regularly spaced
sites. The dripping frequency was increased with increase of the
liquid flow rate. As the Res reached 100, some of the droplets transformed to jet, and the droplet/jet mode appeared. And, when Res
closed to 200, the flow pattern transited to jet mode. As Res up
to 500, some of the jets formed small segments of the liquid sheet,
so jet/sheet mode occured. The critical Re of flow pattern transition
and Hus result [15] were showed in Table 2. Also can be found
from Table 2, critical Re of flow pattern transition for three different tubes was almost the same and consistent with Hus result
[15]. That means the hydrophilic modification has little on flow
pattern transition. The reason for this situation was that the flow
pattern mainly controlled by liquid property [4]. So, the variation
of wettability did not affect the transition of the flow pattern.
The three kinds of tubes demonstrated the remarkable difference in drop mode of falling film flow. For superhydrophilic tubes
and hydrophilic tubes having better hydrophilicity, the liquid film
could easily spread on the surface in the lateral direction. As

Drop to drop/jet

Drop/jet to jet

Jet to jet/sheet

110
108
102
116

217
215
213
191

490
505
482
523

showed in Fig. 5(a), the surfaces always maintained the completely

wetting even with very low Res. While for plain tubes, with the
contact angle of 43.7, the resistances of lateral movement of liquid
film were greater than that for the superhydrophilic and hydrophilic tubes, so the liquid only accumulated at the spray point in the
lower test tube, while the other part of the tube demonstrated in
the form of dry patch. This implied that superhydrophilic and
hydrophilic tubes could reduce the minimum spray density, and
the working flow rate could be expanded to a very low value, compared to the usual situation for plain tube. When Res reached to
130, the dry patch on the plain tubes disappeared, liquid completely cover the entire surface.
3.3. Evaporation heat transfer performance
3.3.1. Effect of sprayflow rate on heat transfer performance
The experiments of falling film evaporation heat transfer were
conducted for three different tubes, including the superhydrophilic
tube, the hydrophilic tube and the plain tube. The experiments
were performed at the Reh of 11,000, the inlet heating water temperature difference of T  Tsat = 6.5 K, and the saturation temperature of 53.9 C.
The heat transfer coefficients of the three tubes were showed
in Fig. 6. It can be found that the deviation between the heat
transfer coefficient of our experiment and Fujitas work [9] was
within 10% when Res was increased from 350 to 700, which
showed that our experimental setup was reliable. It also can be
found that the heat transfer coefficient was almost identical for
the three tubes in the Res range of 350700. And the heat transfer
coefficient kept constant as Res was increased in that range, indicating that the heat transfer performance reached a stable region
for each tube.
On the contrary, significant differences can be observed for the
heat transfer coefficient when Res was decreased to the low spray
density range (Re < 350). For the plain tube, the heat transfer coefficient was increasing as Res was increased and the minimum value
of hpl was 3800 W m2 K1 at Res of 60. And then as Res increased,
the heat transfer coefficient was increasing. Finally, the heat transfer coefficient increased to a maximum value and the heat transfer
performance reached stable region as Res was increased even further. The reason for this situation was that dry spots were formed
on the tube surface during the falling film evaporation as the liquid
cannot wet the plain tube in low Res range. That leaded to heat
transfer coefficient decreased and was relatively lower than Fujitas result [9] when Res was lower than 350. As Res was increased,
the surface coverage of dry spots was reduced and the heat transfer
coefficient was increasing. Finally, the heat transfer coefficient
reached the top when the plain tube was fully covered by the
liquid.
For the hydrophilic surface, the heat transfer coefficient
increased abruptly when Res was increased from 60 to 130 and
then started to decrease as Res was increased even further. The reason for this condition was that the dry spots still existed when Res
was 60 for this tube and the heat transfer coefficient was
7100 W m2 K1. Beneficiated from the higher surface hydrophilicity, the surface coverage of the dry spots was relatively lower on
the hydrophilic tube than that of the plain one. As a result, the heat

Please cite this article in press as: Y. Zheng et al., Experimental study of falling film evaporation heat transfer on superhydrophilic horizontal-tubes at low
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Superhydrophilic

Hydrophilic

Plain

(a) droplet mode Res=40

(b) droplet/jet mode Res=130

(c) jet mode Res=200

(d) jet/jet-sheet mode Res=550

Fig. 5. Comparison of flow pattern.

transfer coefficient was higher on the hydrophilic tube than that of

the plain tube at the same Res. As the flow rate increasing, the
entire surfaces were completely wetted for hydrophilic tubes,
while the thermal resistance caused by dry patches did not exist
anymore. So, the heat transfer coefficient increased rapidly at the
beginning. After that, the thickness of the falling liquid film
increased with the increase of Res and the thermal resistance
was increased, which reduced the heat transfer performance.
As the surface hydrophilicity was improved even further, a
higher heat transfer coefficient was achieved on the superhydrophilic tube. As showed in Fig. 6, the maximum heat transfer
coefficient was about 16,000 W m2 K1 at Res = 60, which was
about 2 times higher than that of the stable region at which the
spray density and the surface wettability did not influence the heat
transfer coefficient any more. For the superhydrophilic tube, the
liquid can spread more rapidly on the tube surface and the tube

can be fully wetted by the liquid at the extreme very spray density,
even for case Res = 60. The heat transfer coefficient also decreased
with Res due to the increase of liquid film thickness. And the heat
transfer coefficient was close to that of the hydrophilic tube in the
Res range of 130350, as the tube surfaces were both fully covered
by the liquid film on two tubes.
The variation of the thermal resistance with the spray density
was showed in Fig. 7. The overall heat transfer thermal resistance
was divided into three parts, the convective heat transfer resistance inside the tube (Rh), resistance of the tube wall (Rt) and the
resistant of evaporation film (Reva). As can be found in Fig. 7, the
Rt took up the small proportion of the thermal resistance and
remained unchanging with Res, while the Rh and Reva occupied
the main part of the heat transfer resistance. With the variation
of the flow rate, the Rh for three different tubes was almost the
same, while the Reva was completely different.

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-2

Heat transfer coefficient Wm K

-1

18000
16000
14000

Superhydrophilic

hsp Reh=11000

Hydrophilic

hhp Reh=11000

Plain tube

hpl Reh=11000

Fujita [9]

12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

Res
Fig. 6. Effects of Re on the heat transfer coefficient of falling film evaporation.

For the plain tubes, there existed an outstanding difference at

Res < 350. The evaporation thermal resistance, Reva, was decreased
with Res and the maximum value of Reva was 0.012 K W1 at Res of
60. And, for the hydrophilic surface, there existed an inflection
point when Res was increased from 60 to 130. Beneficiated from
the higher surface wettability of the plain tube, the hydrophilic
surface was rapidly wetted as flow rates increasing, and the thermal resistance reached the minimum, 0.003 K W1. For the superhydrophilic surface, the thermal resistance was increased with the
flow rates. This can be attributed to the fact that the superhydrophilic tube could be completely wetted in the lower spray density. According to the Nusselt film thickness model [25], the film
thickness, d, was very thin which indicated that the evaporation
thermal resistances of flow rates were lower than that of higher
flow rates and the heat transfer coefficient maintained the higher
performance at low flow rates.
It also can be found that the thermal resistances were virtually
identical for the three tubes at the Res range of 350700 because of
the completely wetting. The evaporation thermal resistance was
affected by film thickness and its fluctuation. The liquid film fluctuation was non-significant when the flow rate was low. After
the spray density exceeded a certain value, the liquid fluctuation

0.025

Thermal Resistances K W -1

0.020
0.015

became notable which could reduce the thermal resistance. After

that, the effect of liquid film thickness and the liquid fluctuation
was balanced and the heat transfer performance became stable,
as showed in Fig. 6 at Res > 350.
Figs. 6 and 7 showed that the surface wettability greatly
affected on the heat transfer performance of falling liquid film
evaporation by improving the wetting characteristics of the liquid
and reducing the surface coverage of the dry spots at low spray
density. For comparison, fully wetted states (no dry spots existing)
were reached at about Res of 60, 130 and 350 for the superhydrophilic, hydrophilic and plain tubes, respectively. Beneficiated
from the fully wetted state, the heat transfer coefficient of the
superhydrophilic tube was about 4 and 2 times as that of the plain
and hydrophilic tubes when Res was 60. The heat transfer experiments represented that the superhydrophilic tube could maintain
a high heat transfer coefficient in a wide range of flow rates (Res
from 60 to 700). The results provide an idea to improve the heat
transfer performance of falling liquid film evaporation using the
superhydrophilic surfaces. And it also allows the heat transfer
equipment to be operated under lower spray density.
3.3.2. Effect of the inlet heating water temperature on heat transfer
performance
The influence of inlet temperature on the heat transfer performance was also tested experimentally under the Reh of 11,000.
The inlet temperature difference was T  Tsat = 6.5 K and 9.5 K.
The Res changed from 60 to 700 and the saturation temperature
was Tsat = 53.9 C. The purpose of choosing this temperature was
to prevent the nucleation boiling on the tested tubes. It is also
pointed out that the existence of the surface of superhydrophilic
tube can improve the heat flux and the occurrence of the boiling
which occurs in the higher heat flux [26]. In the following experiments the maximum heat flux was 35 kW m2, and no bubble was
observed in the experiment.
It can be found in Fig. 8, the inlet temperature of heating water
has little effect on heat transfer coefficient, but it has a great effect
on heat flux for superhydrophilic surface when the Res ranged from
60 to 700. For plain and hydrophilic tubes, it can be found there
was a heat transfer performance decrease occurred as the superheat of inlet heating water temperature changing from 6.5 K to
9.5 K at low flow rates. For plain tubes, the heat transfer coefficient
only had a little decrease when Res was lower than 350 because of
the decreased surface coverage. However, for hydrophilic surfaces,

Superhydrophilic

Rtot

Reva

Rh

Rt

Hydrophilic

Rtot

Reva

Rh

Rt

Plain tube

Rtot

Reva

Rh

Rt

400

500

0.010
0.005
0.000
0.025
0.020
0.015
0.010
0.005
0.000
0.025
0.020
0.015
0.010
0.005
0.000

100

200

300

600

700

800

Re s
Fig. 7. Comparison of thermal resistance of three kinds of tubes with different wettabilities.

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4. Conclusions

-2

Heat transfer coefficient Wm K

-1

18000

hPl 6.5K
hPl 9.5K

16000

hSp 6.5K
hSp 9.5K

hHp 6.5K
hHp 9.5K

Reh =11000

14000
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

Re s
Fig. 8. Effect of heating water inlet temperature on falling film evaporation heat
transfer coefficients.

the heat transfer performance declined by about 20% when the Res
was 130. As the increase of inlet temperature, the wall temperature
of evaporation tube raised, and hence increased the minimum
spray density for wetted hydrophilic surfaces because of the thermal capillary force [20]. Beneficiated from the higher surface wettability of the hydrophilic tube, the surface coverage of the dry
spots was relatively lower and rapidly completely wetted at
Res = 180. After that, the total heat transfer performance showed
the similar trend as the inlet temperature was 6.5 K. Meanwhile,
the maximum heat transfer coefficient was achieved at Res of
180. And for superhydrophilic surfaces, the increasing of inlet temperature could not rupture the film and form dry spots on the
superhydrophilic surface for better surface wettability. So, it can
be found that the total heat transfer coefficient of superhydrophilic
was basically no significant change at the entire operation range.
The heat flux change with Res was showed in Fig. 9. For hydrophilic tubes and plain tubes, the heat flux only increased by 40%
and 20% at Res = 60, due to the fact that the area of dry patches
become bigger under the high temperature difference. Although,
the evaporation heat transfer coefficient variation with the temperature was not obvious for the superhydrophilic tubes, the heat
flux at temperature difference of 9.5 K was 1.75 times that of 6.5 K
when Res was 60, which indicated that the superhydrophilic tubes
showed better heat transfer performance under the high heat flux.
40000
35000

Heat flux W

30000
25000
20000
15000
10000
5000
0

Plain tube 6.5K

Plain tube 9.5K

Hydrophilic 6.5K

Hydrophilic 9.5K

Superhydrophilic 6.5K

Superhydrophilic 9.5K

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

Re s
Fig. 9. Effect of heating water inlet temperature on falling film heat flux.

In this study, two different chemical etching methods were

used to improve the surface wettability of the copper tubes and
the heat transfer performance of three tubes with different surface
wettabilities were experimentally tested for the falling liquid film
evaporation.
The visualization results showed that the superhydrophilic and
hydrophilic tubes could be completely wetted in the overall range
of the experiment and the hydrophilic modification was a useful
method to reduce the spray density, and to improve heat transfer
performance. It was also observed that the hydrophilic modification has little effect on flow pattern transition.
The surface wettability greatly affected on the heat transfer performance of falling liquid film evaporation by improving the wetting characteristics of the liquid film and reducing the surface
coverage of the dry spots at low spray density. Beneficiated from
the fully wetted state, the heat transfer coefficient of the superhydrophilic tube was about 4 and 2 times as that of the plain and
hydrophilic tubes respectively when Res was 60. The superhydrophilic tube could maintain a high heat transfer coefficient in a
wide range of flow rates (Res from 60 to 700). The results provided
a method to improve the heat transfer performance of falling liquid
film evaporation by the fabrication of superhydrophilic surfaces.
Acknowledgement
The authors are grateful to the financial supports by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51236002).
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spray density, Appl. Therm. Eng. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2016.07.177