Condensation heat flux measurements in ambient conditions on superhydrophobic nanostructured surfaces

Abstract

Water vapor condensation is a natural phenomenon experienced in everyday life which can be combined with non-wetting surfaces to enhance heat transfer, desalination, anti-icing and self-cleaning. Recently, superhydrophobic coatings have gathered attention with jumping droplets with the potential for self-cleaning applications and spot cooling on high powered applications. With new coatings being used on different materials, a need has developed for heat transfer measurements through these superhydrophobic coatings as typical heat transfer calculations have been known to underestimate the total heat transfer. Here, I propose to measure the heat flux of a superhydrophobic, nanostructured surface without the need for a controlled vacuum environment. By measuring heat flux within an individual droplet and multiple droplets within a surface, we show that it is possible to measure heat flux of a surface without the need for expensive equipment. As a means of validating these results, experiments within a vacuum chamber will be repeated; hence, the author has provided notes regarding the vacuum chamber building process. This work demonstrates the ability for other researchers to know the heat flux density of a newly fabricated surface to perform initial calculations. Further experiments will involve a vacuum chamber in which similar experiments will be run to be able to compare data and see the effect of atmospheric conditions and non-condensable gasses.