A critical analysis of correlations for saturated nucleate pool-boiling heat transfer over vertical tubes and tube bundles: Development of improved models

Pool boiling over vertical tubes is vastly experienced in the nuclear industry, where nucleate boiling plays a crucial role in transferring heat. In this context, many experiments have been done in the recent past and developed various correlations for boiling heat transfer. The correlations are influenced by system parameters and the geometrical configuration of the surfaces. Therefore, a wide range of experimental data for saturated pool boiling over vertical tubes and their bundles are taken into consideration to examine the prediction accuracy of various correlations. The prediction errors of various correlations are reported both in tabular and graphical forms. Keeping the most critical parameters in mind, this article proposes two new semi-empirical correlations for predicting the heat transfer coefficient over vertical tubes and their bundles. These developed correlations are able to predict saturated boiling heat transfer coefficients over the tube bundle and single tube data within ±15 % and ±20 %, respectively.