Performance of a Closed-Tube Aerosyphon With Large Length-Diameter Ratios

The paper reports an experimental investigation of heat transfer in the closed-tube aerosyphon (aerated-thermosyphon) for a range of conditions representative of northern field applications. In particular, attention is focused on the effect of using tubes with heated lengths not only greater than the cooled lengths, but very much greater than the tube diameter. Using three heated sections and one cooled section, the geometry of the device has been varied systematically with 10 < L_H/d < 50 and 1 < L_H/L_C < 20. For any given geometry, the effect of air bubbling rate has been studied in the range of 0 < V˙ < 5 × 10⁻⁵ m³/S. Using these ranges it has been possible to make comparisons with other thermosyphon and aerosyphon data. The results indicate that heat transfer coefficients are reduced by increasing either length-diameter ratio or heated-cooled length ratio. They also reveal that, in general terms, the aerosyphon is almost an order-of-magnitude more effective than the single-phase thermosyphon. Some obervations on the flow regimes are offered, and an empirical correlation is presented.