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Author
Kedzierski, M. A.
Title
Effect of Lubricant Concentration, Miscibility, and Viscosity on R134a Pool Boiling.
Coporate
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
Journal
International Journal of Refrigeration, Vol. 24, 348-366, 2001
Report
NISTIR 6450, January 2000, 61 p.
Distribution
AVAILABLE FROM National Technical Information Service (NTIS), Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Springfield, VA 22161. Telephone: 1-800-553-6847 or 703-605-6000; Fax: 703-605-6900. Website: http://www.ntis.gov
Keywords
refrigerants | lubricants | heat transfer | surfactants | viscosity
Identifiers
alternative refrigerants; boiling; concentration; enhanced heat transfer; miscibility; pool boiling; R134a; refigerant/lubricant mixtures; visualization
Abstract
This paper presents pool boiling heat transfer data for twelve different R134/lubricant mixtures and pure R134a on a Turbo-BII-HP surface. The mixtures were designed to examine the effects of lubricant mass fraction, viscosity, and miscibility on the heat transfer performance of R134a. The magnitude of the effect of each parameter on the heat transfer was quantified with a regression analysis. The mechanistic cause of each effect was given based on new theoretical interpretation and/or one from the literature. The model illustrates that large improvements over pure R134a heat transfer can be obtained for R134a/lubricant mixtures with small lubricant mass fraction, high lubricant viscosity, and a large critical solution temperature (CST). The ratio of the heat flux of the R134a/lubricant mixture to that of the pure R134a for fixed wall superheat was given as a function of pure R134a heat flux for all twelve mixtures. The lubricant that had the largest CST with R134a exhibited the greatest heat transfer: 100% ± 20% greater than that of pure R134a. By contrast, the heat transfer of the mixture with the lubricant that had the smallest viscosity and the smallest CST with R134a was 55% ± 9% of that of pure R134a. High-speed films of the pure and mixture pool boiling were taken to observe the effect of the lubricant on the nucleate boiling.