Synergistic Effects of Hydrophilic-Hydrophobic Porous Structures for Enhancing Nucleate Pool Boiling Heat Transfer

Boiling is an efficient mode of heat transfer and has important applications that use high heat flux systems. However, a single wettable boiling surface is not appropriate for the dual requirements of low superheat for nucleation and high critical heat flux. Here, we present a hydrophilic composite and a functional hydrophilic-hydrophobic partitioned porous structure that significantly improves boiling heat transfer performance via a double-sintering process. The superheat requirement for the onset of nucleate boiling decreased from 2°C on the single hydrophilic porous structure to 1°C on the hydrophilic-hydrophobic porous structure, the critical heat flux was reduced by 3.3