Aluminum foams for water pool boiling enhancement

The study of pool boiling has been a topic of worldwide research over the past 100 years or so starting with the development of boiling curves in stagnant liquid layers. It is now well known that surface treatments can provide effective boiling heat transfer enhancement, and many variants of treated surfaces have been developed. This work presents an experimental analysis of water pool boiling heat transfer on aluminum foams. Three samples of 10 mm thick aluminum foam layers with 5, 10, and 40 PPI each with a mean porosity of 0.92 were brazed on identical aluminum plates and then tested during pool boiling in a dedicated setup. The measurement data were then compared against those collected during water pool boiling over a smooth horizontal reference aluminum plate. The metal foams showed better boiling heat transfer performance as compared to the smooth surface. Besides, for a more comprehensive understanding of the problem and visual analysis, the boiling process was recorded using a high-speed camera.