A New Saturated Two-Phase Flow Boiling Correlation Based on Propane (R290) Data

There are plenty of literature research studies investigating two-phase heat transfer characteristics of propane under varying operational conditions. Based on the collected data retrieved from the experimental measurements, several flow boiling heat transfer correlations have been proposed up to now. However, the prediction accuracy of the proposed correlations for propane refrigerant is still in question as most of the correlation is developed for their measurements or derived for a limited range of operational conditions. To conquer this drawback, this study proposes a new flow boiling heat transfer model for smooth tubes based on a propane experimental database compiled of 2179 points obtained from different eighteen laboratories around the world. Operational conditions of the database cover mass fluxes between 50 and 600 kg/m2s, saturation temperatures between ? 35.0 and 43.0 °C, heat fluxes between 2.5 and 227.0 kW/m2, hydraulic diameters between 0.3 and 7.7 mm, and thermodynamic qualities 0.01 to 0.99. Estimations performed by the new flow boiling model have been compared to those obtained by the literature correlations, and comparative results indicate that the proposed model surpasses the existing flow boiling in terms of prediction accuracy with a mean absolute error of 19.1% and mean relative error of 1.7%. © 2021, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals