Experimental Study of Surfactant Effects on Pool Boiling Heat Transfer

In the first part of this work, nucleate boiling of aqueous solutions of sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) over relatively wide ranges of concentration and heat flux was carried out in a pool boiling apparatus. The experimental results show that a small amount of surface active additive makes the nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficient h considerably higher, and that there is an optimum additive concentration for higher heat fluxes. Beyond this optimum point, further increase in additive concentration makes h lower. In the second part of this work, nucleate boiling heat transfer rate for n-propanol-water binary mixtures with various amounts of sodium lauryl sulfate were measured in the same pool boiling apparatus. The importance of the mass diffusion effect, which is caused by preferential evaporation of the more volatile component at the vapor-liquid interface on the boiling of the binary mixture, has been confirmed. However, it is shown that the effect exerted by the addition of a surfactant dominates over the mass diffusion effect in dilute binary mixtures.