How dynamic adsorption controls surfactant-enhanced boiling.

ABSTRACT: Improving boiling is challenging due to the unpredictable nature of bubbles. One way to enhance boiling is with surfactants, which alter the solid-liquid and liquid-vapor interfaces. The conventional wisdom established by previous studies suggests that heat transfer enhancement is optimized near the critical micelle concentration (CMC), which is an equilibrium property that depends on surfactant type. However, these studies only tested a limited number of surfactants over small concentration ranges. Here, we test a larger variety of nonionic and anionic surfactants over the widest concentration range and find that a universal, optimal concentration range exists, irrespective of CMC. To explain this, we show that surfactant-enhanced boiling is controlled by two competing phenomena: (1) the

SUBMITTER: Mata MR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9616907 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature