Liquid exploding emission during boiling nucleation in capillary tubes

A series of experiments was conducted to visually observe boiling nucleation phenomena in micro capillary tubes employing a high speed CCD. At a higher heat flux the liquid in capillary tubes was emitted instantaneously rather than generating nucleate boiling, which is referred as liquid exploding emission in this paper. Both critical emission heat flux and temperature corresponding to this phenomenon were measured for tubes with different heating lengths and arrangements of two end sections. Boiling nucleation and liquid film evaporation played critical roles in different stages during exploding emission. Dimensionless critical emission volumetric heat was introduced to describe the conditions of the emission instead of heat flux, and theoretical discussions were conducted to explore the influences of thermal properties and geometrical configuration, particularly heating length and asymmetry of two end sections of tubes.