Heat Transfer and Water Consumption of Water Spray Cooling of High-Temperature Surfaces: A Review on Empirical Correlations

Water spray cooling by spray nozzles is used in many technological and engineering applications, ranging from cooling of electronic devices to metal processing in steelmaking. In the latter case, the setup of water spray cooling have a significant influence on the quality of the produced steel as well as on the consumption of water for cooling, and thus on water footprint. The casting processes are often controlled by means of computer models. In such case, spray cooling is characterised in the form of boundary conditions. There are many empirical correlations available in the literature. However, there is a lack of a study, which would compare them to each other from the viewpoint of heat withdrawal and the water consumption. The present paper aims to fill this gap and the results demonstrate that an appropriate correlation for a considered case has to be selected thoroughly, taking into account various aspects. The results show that the correlations differ about 20-times in terms of heat withdrawal and more than 400-times in terms of the water consumption