Effects of hydrophilic surface treatment on evaporation heat transfer at the outside wall of horizontal tubes

An experimental study has been conducted to investigate the effects of hydrophilic surface treatment on evaporation heat transfer at the outside wall of various kinds of copper tubes. Plain, spiral, corrugated, and low-finned tubes were selected as test tubes. In this work, to increase the wettability of distilled water on copper tubes, a novel hydrophilic surface treatment method using plasma was employed. The experiments show that every kind of hydrophilic surface treated tube tested in the work exhibits superior evaporation heat transfer performance as compared with that of the same kind of untreated tube. It is found out that during the evaporation process, the high wettability of the surface obtained through hydrophilic treatment induces film flow on the tubes while sessile drops are formed on untreated tubes. The film has a smaller thickness as well as a greater heat transfer area than the sessile drops, and this yields higher heat transfer rate for hydrophilic surface treated tubes than that for untreated tubes. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.