BT-1 Boiling Heat Transfer in a Vertical Thermosiphon Reboiler
The report documents the correlations developed by HTRI for heat transfer and maximum heat flux of pure components and narrow boiling range mixtures in vertical thermosphon reboilers. The correlations are based on over 500 data runs covering pressures from deep vacuum to near the critical point using typical thermosiphon reboiler bundles with three different tube diameters and two different effective tube lengths. Several different inlet and exit piping configurations were also studied.
The basic formulations obtained are similar to the familiar Chen and Fair methods but unique HTRI improvements in many areas permit much more accurate prediction, especially in deep vacuum and at high pressures.
In addition to descriptions of the data and comparison with prediction methods, the report presents and discusses observations of qualitative parametric effects in thermosiphon boiling performance which should be useful in improving future designs.