Donald Q. Kern Lecture Award Paper: Odyssey of the Enhanced Boiling Surface

This paper traces the evolution of enhanced boiling surfaces. Early work was highly empirical and done in industrial research. The 1968 Milton patent [“Heat Exchange System,” U.S. Patent 3,696,861] described the first porous coated surface, and the 1972 Webb patent [“Heat Transfer Surface Having a High Boiling Heat Transfer Coefficient,” U.S. Patent 3,521,708] described a “structured” tube surface geometry. The first fundamental understanding of the “pore-and-tunnel” geometry was published by Nakayama in 1980 [Nakayama, W., Daikoku, T., Kuwahara, H., and Nakajima, T. 1980, “Dynamic Model of Enhanced Boiling Heat Transfer on Porous Surfaces Part I: Experimental Investigation,” J. Heat Transfer, 102, pp. 445–450]. Webb and Chien’s flow visualization allowed observation of the evaporation in the subsurface tunnels [Chien, L.-H., and Webb, R. L., 1998, “Visualization of Pool Boiling on Enhanced Surfaces,” Exp. Fluid Thermal Sci., 16b, pp. 332–341]. They also performed an experimental parametric study that defines the effect of pore diameter and pitch on the boiling performance. The progression of work on analytical boiling models is also reviewed.