International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 67 (2013) 836–842

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International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

Experimental study on heat transfer characteristics of circulatory flash

evaporation
Yousen Zhang 1, Jinshi Wang 1, Jiping Liu 1, Daotong Chong 2, Wei Zhang 1, Junjie Yan ⇑
State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Flash evaporation with velocity in horizontal direction, called the circulatory flash evaporation, is the
Received 26 August 2012 main mechanism in many industry processes such as multi-stage flash (MSF) desalination. The previous
Received in revised form 17 August 2013 studies are mainly concerned about the characteristics of static flash evaporation or the flow pattern of
Accepted 23 August 2013
the fluid in the single stage of the MSF. Little work has been performed on the heat transfer characteristics
Available online 20 September 2013
of circulatory flash evaporation. In the present paper a circulatory flash evaporation system was built. The
experiments were carried out with flow rates of 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200 L h1, initial water film heights
Keywords:
ranging from 100 to 265 mm and at pressures of 7.4, 12.3, 19.9, 31.2 kPa, respectively. Results indicated
Circulatory flash evaporation
High horizontal velocity
that non-equilibrium fraction (NEF) augmented to a peak value at first and decreased monotonously
NEF when superheat increased. The heat transfer coefficient dropped with the increase in the superheat.
Volumetric heat transfer coefficient The influence of flow rate, pressure in the flash chamber and initial water film height on the variation
of NEF and heat transfer coefficient was also investigated. The NEF decreased with increasing flow rate
and pressure in the flash chamber but increased as the initial water film height rising. However, the vol-
umetric heat transfer coefficient showed an opposite law.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction two exponential decay processes. A non-equilibrium temperature

Flash evaporation is a phenomenon of violent pool boiling.
When water is channeled into low pressure environment, the li-
quid bulk becomes superheated and its superheat will transform
into latent heat of flash steam when the liquid temperature is high-
er than the saturation temperature corresponding to the environ-
ment pressure. Due to the sudden phase change, flash
evaporation phenomenon causes a sudden temperature drop of
the liquid. It is widely used in industrial processes such as the cool-
ing of hot parts of a shuttle by water spraying under low pressure
conditions [1,2], the salt disposal [3,4] and seawater desalination
[5,6], grape cooling in wine manufacturing process [7] and the
break of the core reactor cooling in nuclear power plants [8].
Flash evaporation phenomenon received worldwide attention
recent decades. The static flash evaporation was firstly studied.
Miyatake et al. [9,10] carried out an experiment on pure water
with superheat ranging from 3 to 5 K and equilibrium temperature
from 40 to 80 °C. They found that the flash evaporation underwent
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 29 82665741; fax: +86 29 82675741.
E-mail addresses: yszhang@stu.xjtu.edu.cn (Y. Zhang), wangjinshi@mail.xjtu.
edu.cn (J. Wang), liujp@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (J. Liu), dtchong@mail.xjtu.edu.cn
(D. Chong), zhangweijacson@stu.xjtu.edu.cn (W. Zhang), yanjj@mail.xjtu.edu.cn
(J. Yan).
1
Tel.: +86 29 82665742; fax: +86 29 82675741.
2
Tel.: +86 29 82665359; fax: +86 29 82675741.
and non-equilibrium fraction were proposed in this article.
Gopalakrishna et al. [11,12] investigated the seawater flash evapo-
ration with superheats ranging from 0.5 to 10 K, initial water film
heights of 165,305 and 467 mm and the solution concentration
from 0% to 3.5%. They proposed a correlation of mass evaporated
on the parameters mentioned above. Saury et al. [13] conducted
a study on the distilled water flash evaporation with superheats
of 1–35 K, initial water film height of 15 mm and initial water tem-
perature from 30 to 75 °C. A correlation between the water mass
evaporated by flashing and the superheat was then obtained. The
duration of the flash evaporation phenomenon was estimated. Be-
sides, studies on the circulatory flash evaporation are performed,
mainly in MSF process. Mandil and Ghafour [14] proposed a new
approach to the optimization of multi-stage flash evaporation
plants. Fath [15] simulated a 6-stage multi-stage flash evaporation
system. The flash evaporation stage efficiency b was defined to
evaluate the performance of each flash evaporation stage. They
found that an increase in the superheat and the residence time in
the flash chamber had promoted the evaporation. Jin [16,17] per-
formed experimental and simulation work on the singe stage of
multi-stage flash evaporation system at saturated pressure
0.023 MPa and 75, 97, 177 mm high water film. Factors such as
bubble size, distribution of the vortex number and water film
height influencing flash evaporation was analyzed under different
superheats. They found the multiphase flash flow was dependent

0017-9310/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2013.08.088
 Y. Zhang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 67 (2013) 836–842
Nomenclature
b width of flash chamber (m)
L length of flash chamber (m)
H water film height (mm)
T temperature (°C)
pf pressure in flash chamber (MPa)
r latent heat of vaporization (kJ kg1)
h heat transfer coefficient (kW m3 K1)
Q volume flow rate (L h1)
NEF non-equilibrium fraction
mev evaporated mass flow rate (kg s 1)
u horizontal velocity (m s1)
on the superheat and the nucleation distribution. Our research
team [18] conducted a comparative work on the heat and mass
transfer characteristics of static and circulatory flash evaporation.
A unified calculating model for these two flash evaporation pat-
terns was set up as well as a new volumetric heat transfer coeffi-
cient. Furthermore, study on the steam-carrying effect and
experiments on the aqueous NaCl solution at different pressure
and water film height were presented in Zhang et al.’s work
[19,20].
The previous studies mainly focused on the static flash evapora-
tion and the flow characteristics in the MSF process. Little work on
the heat transfer performance of circulatory flash evaporation has
been conducted. Because of the effect of the horizontal velocity, the
heat transfer characteristics between static flash evaporation and
circulatory flash evaporation is different, a circulatory flash evapo-
ration system was designed and built up. Furthermore, the effect of
pressures, initial water film heights in flash chamber and flow rates
influencing the flash evaporation was studied in this paper.
2. Experimental setup and methods
2.1. Experimental system
A test rig for circulatory flash evaporation, shown in Fig. 1(a),
was designed and constructed. This apparatus contains four circu-
latory loops: a basic hydrothermal loop, a flash steam loop and two
auxiliary condensing loops. The basic hydrothermal loop is com-
posed of a circulating pump, an electrical heater, two metal rotam-
eters with a range of 0–1600 L h1 and a precision of 1%, a flash
chamber and a heat exchanger. The electrical heater has 20 groups
heating outside the tube. Each group has a power of 3 kW. To get
concise temperature regulation, 3 groups of them are controlled
by a voltage regulator. The flash chamber is a rectangular cavity
with a height of 0.66 m and a cross section of b  L = 0.1  0.1 m.
The front of the flash chamber is covered with glass plate for visu-
alization just like the back. Two 25 mm-diameter adjusting valves
with two thermocouples are arranged at the inlet and outlet of the
flash chamber. A liquid level meter with a precision of 0.1 mm is
set at the right side of flash chamber to measure the initial water
film height. Water in the loop is driven by a circulating pump. A
shell-tube heat exchanger is placed near the outlet of the flash
chamber to cool down the water so as to protect the pump from
cavitation. The flash steam loop consists of a shell-tube heat ex-
changer and a mass flowmeter with a range of 0–110 kg h1 and
a precision of 0.2%. The two auxiliary loops include centrifugal
pumps, a water tank and a heat exchanger which ensures the flash
steam completely condensed and less leakage.
The two auxiliary loops and the vacuum pump are run up to
create a stable pressure at the beginning of each experiment. Dis-
837
Greek symbols
DT superheat (K)
sL residence time (s)
Subscripts
in inlet
out outlet
f flash chamber
L length
ev evaporation
tilled water is led into the electrical heater by the circulating
pump. It is channeled into the flash chamber through the inlet
valve when it is heated to the demanding temperature. Flash evap-
oration happens as soon as the water gets into the chamber, and
the flash steam is evacuated to the condenser to be liquefied and
the flow rate of the condensed water is measured by mass flowme-
ter. Simultaneously data acquisition system starts to work.
The pressures are measured by absolute pressure sensors with
range of 0–0.2 MPa and a precision of 0.25% in full scale. The tem-
perature in this experiment is gauged by a series of T type thermo-
couples. The distribution of thermocouples in the flash chamber is
shown in Fig. 1(b). Thermocouples above the water level are used
to measure the temperature of flash vapor and the ones below the
level to the flashed water in the flash chamber.
Experiments were conducted with flow rates of 400, 600, 800,
1000, 1200 L h1, water film heights ranging from 100 to
265 mm and at pressures of 7.4, 12.3, 19.9, 31.2 kPa, respectively.
2.2. Uncertainty analysis and reproducibility
Ranges of all parameters in this experiment are listed in Table 1.
The uncertainty of the parameters, calculated using the Moffat [21]
method, is also shown in Table 2.
Fig. 2 illustrates the reproducibility of this experiment. It shows
the NEF evolution at pressure of 19.9 kPa and the initial water film
height of 180 mm with a flow rate of 800 L h1. These two curves
fit well in the whole superheat scope. Results indicate that this
experiment has excellent reproducibility and the experiment data
is authentic.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Visualization
As is shown in Fig. 3, it is visualization of flash evaporation at
different superheats-with pressure of 12.3 kPa, flow rates of
800 L h1 and initial water film height of 180 mm. Firstly, bubbles
in the flash chamber are little and have a small size. The size gets
larger and the number of bubbles is more when the superheat in-
creases. The water film in the flash chamber is slit by the flash
steam, getting unsteady. The flash vapor layer gets thicker as the
superheat of water film becomes larger, corresponding to the thin-
ning of the water film layer.
3.2. NEF vs. superheat at different conditions
NEF at the outlet of the flash chamber is a significant indicator
to evaluate the completion degree of circulatory flash evaporation.
838 Y. Zhang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 67 (2013) 836–842

Fig. 1. Circulatory flash evaporation experimental system (a) and thermocouples distribution in flash chamber (b).

Table 1
Range of experimental parameters.

Parameter Range
H/m 0.1–0.3
pf/MPa 0.0074–0.07
Q/L h1 400–1400
DT/K 2–30

Table 2
Uncertainty of circulatory flash system.

Parameter Absolute Minimal measured Uncertainty

uncertainty value
p/MPa 5  104 0.0074 6.75  102
T/°C 0.2 40.2 4.98  103
H/m 0.1 1.0  103 Fig. 2. The reproducibility of this experiment.
1  104
b/m 1  104 0.1 1.0  103
L/m 1  104 0.1 1.0  103
Q/L h1 8.0 400 0.02
mev/kg s1 – – 2.0  103 the water is 1.1 °C higher than the one at the top when the pressure
hc / kW m3 K1 – – in the flash chamber is 70 kPa and 6.7 °C when the pressure is 7 kPa.
8.34  102 Fig. 5((a) and (b)) indicates evolution of NEF vs. superheats at
DT/K – – 4.98  103
NEF – – 8.33  102
different flow rates. For all pressure, NEF firstly increased to a peak
value and then decreased with the increase of superheats. More
and more superheat energy was transformed into the latent heat
of the flash vapor when the superheats became larger. These two
figures also illustrate that NEF elevated as the flow rate increased.
A smaller NEF corresponds to more completed flash evaporation. The increase in the flow rate strengthened the turbulence of the
The outlet temperature was measured in order to obtain the NEF: horizontal flow in the flash chamber. The water film was slit by
the flash vapor so that the effect of hydrostatic head got weak.
T out  T e DT out
NEF ¼ ¼ ð1Þ The water at lower level could evaporate.
T in  T e DT in Evolution of NEF vs. superheats at different pressures is pre-
Fig. 4((a) and (b)) illustrates variation of NEF vs. superheats at dif- sented in Fig. 6((a) and (b)). From the figures we can conclude that
ferent initial water film heights. NEF dropped with the rising of the higher pressure results in less NEF. The higher pressure corre-
the initial water film height under the same condition after the peak sponds to the higher saturate temperature so that the initial tem-
point. Increasing of the initial water film height results in a larger perature of water into the flash chamber at higher pressure is
hydrostatic head which suppressing the flash evaporation. Take larger than the one at lower pressure at the same superheat. While
the height 0.3 m for example, additional pressure (qgH) can reach the viscosity, the latent heat of vaporization and the specific heat
nearly 3 kPa. As a result, the saturation temperature at bottom of capacity decrease with the increase of water temperature. Flash
 Y. Zhang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 67 (2013) 836–842 839

Fig. 3. Visualization of circulatory flash evaporation phenomenon at different superheats with flow rate of 800 L h1, pressure in flash chamber of 12.3 kPa and water film
level of 180 mm: (a) 0 K; (b) 1.0 K; (c) 2.1 K; (d) 3.1 K; (e) 5.0 K; (f) 6.1 K; (g) 7.0 K; (h) 8.1 K; (i) 9.0 K; (j) 10.2 K; (k) 12.1 K; (l) 14.0 K; (m) 15.2 K; (n) 16.2 K; (o) 17.2 K; (p)
18.1 K; (q) 19.0 K; (r) 20.4 K.

(a) (b)

Fig. 4. Evolution of NEF vs. superheats at different water film heights: (a) Q = 800 L h1, Pf = 19.9 kPa; (b) Q = 800 L h1, Pf = 31.2 kPa.

evaporation is more intended to occur at higher water gradually drops down. This result can be explained as follows. As
temperature. is shown in Fig. 3, when superheat is small, corresponding to qui-
All the NEF curves showed that there exists a peak value. As escent water film, hot water quickly leaves the flash chamber be-
superheat increases, NEF quickly rises to a peak value and then fore the superheat is completely transformed into the latent heat
840 Y. Zhang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 67 (2013) 836–842

(a) (b)

Fig. 5. Evolution of NEF vs. superheats at different flow rates: (a) Pf = 12.3 kPa, H = 200 mm; (b) Pf = 19.9 kPa, H = 160 mm.

(a) (b)

Fig. 6. Evolution of NEF vs. superheats at different pressures: (a) Q = 800 L h1, H = 180 mm; (b) Q = 800 L h1, H = 160 mm.

(a) (b)

Fig. 7. Evolution of hc vs. superheats at different water film heights: (a) Q = 800 L h1, Pf = 19.9 kPa; (b) Q = 800 L h1, Pf = 31.2 kPa.

of flash vapor. As superheat is large, corresponding to turbulent
water film, Existing of vortexes which prolong the residence time
of the hot water in the flash chamber so that flash boiling is
further enhanced. More superheat of hot water was transformed
into the latent heat of flash vapor. The bigger superheat leads
to a smaller NEF. Both extreme states imply that at least a peak
value exists. The mechanism behind will be investigated in the
future.
3.3. The variation of volumetric heat transfer coefficient (hc)
3.3.1. The variation of hc vs. superheats
As is shown in Fig. 3, the water level is unobvious and unstable
when the superheat increases. A reasonable heat transfer
coefficient should be introduced to evaluate the heat transfer
characteristics. A volumetric heat transfer coefficient [18], defined
by Eq. (2), was adopted in our investigation.
rmev
hc ¼ ð2Þ
2DT in bLH
All the graphs below show that the heat transfer coefficient drops
monotonously from a high value and no dramatic change is found
when the superheat gets larger.
Variation of hc vs. superheats at different water film heights is
presented in Fig. 7((a) and (b)). The heat transfer coefficient in-
creased when the water film height decreased. This is due to the
high water level which suppresses the boiling of the water at bot-
tom of the flash chamber as it is explained in the NEF vs. super-
heats at different heights.
 Y. Zhang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 67 (2013) 836–842 841

(a) (b)

Fig. 8. Evolution of hc vs. superheats at different pressures: (a) Q = 400 L h1, H = 180 mm; (b) Q = 800 L h1, H = 180 mm.

(a) (b)

Fig. 9. Evolution of hc vs. superheats at different flow rates: (a) Pf = 12.3 kPa, H = 180 mm; (b) Pf = 31.2 kPa, H = 190 mm.

Graphs in Fig. 8((a) and (b)) illustrate variation of hc at different

pressures. There was no obvious change when the pressure altered. (a)
It indicated that the pressure was insensitive to the heat transfer
coefficient. As is explained in the NEF evaluation vs. pressure, the
pressure alteration just changed the latent heat of vaporization
and the specific heat capacity very slightly in the experiment
scope. Both factors above affected the volumetric heat transfer
coefficient faintly.
Fig. 9((a) and (b)) shows alteration of volumetric heat transfer
coefficient at different flow rates. It could be seen that the heat
transfer coefficient increased when the flow rates increased. The
horizontal water film velocity became larger when the flow rates
increased. The water turbulence became more and more violent
in such a narrow 100 mm-length flash chamber. This is consistent
with the law of NEF variation.
(b)
3.3.2. The variation of hc vs. residence time
The residence time of the flash evaporation in Yan et al.’s study
[18] is adopted in our investigation. The expression of this time is
presented in Eq. (3)

L
sL ¼ ð3Þ
u
Fig. 10(a) shows that the heat transfer coefficient decreased when
the residence time increased. This can be explained as follows.
The short residence time matched up to the large flow rate. So var-
iation of the heat transfer coefficient with the residence time was
similar to the influence of flow rate on it. The residence time scope
in the former study (area I) and this paper (area II) are presented in
Fig. 10(b). Experiments were carried out at pressure of 7.4 kPa, with Fig. 10. Variation of hc vs. residence time: (a) experimental results; (b) comparison
water film height of 150 mm and superheats of 5, 10 K. The result of theoretical and experimental results.
842 Y. Zhang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 67 (2013) 836–842
implied that the heat transfer coefficient variation tendency was
similar to the theoretical results but the magnitude was smaller.
The disturbance got fiercer when the horizontal velocity increased.
The residence time was longer than the one calculated in Eq. (3).
The differences could be explained as follows. The theoretical re-
sults are obtained from the former study, which investigated the
circulatory flash evaporation under low flow rates. The influence
of flow rates on circulatory flash evaporation in our former study
[18] is weaker than the present study. Moreover, the theoretical
equation is derived from the static flash evaporation, not consider-
ing the influence of flow rates on flash evaporation.
4. Conclusions
In this paper a series of experiments are performed to study the
heat transfer characteristics of circulatory flash evaporation at dif-
ferent flow rates, pressures in the flash chamber and water film
height with a wider range, which is not conducted in the previous
studies. Two significant indicators, NEF and volumetric heat trans-
fer coefficient are investigated.
NEF vs. superheat existed a peak value. NEF firstly increased to a
peak value and then descended when the superheat increased.
Increasing flow rate and pressure in the flash chamber would pro-
mote the flash evaporation, and make the flow in the chamber
more turbulent and boiling phenomenon more severe, while the
high water film suppress the boiling.
The newly introduced volumetric heat transfer coefficient
change showed a descending trend. It dropped from a high value
at small superheat and had no obvious alternation at high super-
heat. The large flow rates, high pressures in the flash chamber
and low water film, would enhance the heat transfer of pool boil-
ing. Moreover, the variation of heat transfer coefficient vs. resi-
dence time agreed well with the previous results of Yan et al.’s
study. Investigation of circulatory flash evaporation with more
horizontal velocities should be conducted in the future.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number
50976089/51125027) and the National Basic Research Program of
China (973 Program, Grant Number 2009CB219803).
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