Modeling and optimization of hybrid solar thermoelectric systems with thermosyphons

We present the modeling and optimization of a new hybrid solar thermoelectric (HSTE) system which uses a thermosyphon to passively transfer heat to a bottoming cycle for various applications. A parabolic trough mirror concentrates solar energy onto a selective surface coated thermoelectric to produce electrical power. Meanwhile, a thermosyphon adjacent to the back side of the thermoelectric maintains the temperature of the cold junction and carries the remaining thermal energy to a bottoming cycle. Bismuth telluride, lead telluride, and silicon germanium thermoelectrics were studied with copper–water, stainless steel–mercury, and nickel–liquid potassium thermosyphon-working fluid combinations. An energy-based model of the HSTE system with a thermal resistance network was developed to determine overall performance. In addition, the HSTE system efficiency was investigated for temperatures of 300–1200 K, solar concentrations of 1–100 suns, and different thermosyphon and thermoelectric materials with a geometry resembling an evacuated tube solar collector. Optimizations of the HSTE show ideal system efficiencies as high as 52.6% can be achieved at solar concentrations of 100 suns and bottoming cycle temperatures of 776 K. For solar concentrations less than 4 suns, systems with thermosyphon wall thermal conductivities as low as 1.2 W/mK have comparable efficiencies to that of high conductivity material thermosyphons, i.e. copper, which suggests that lower cost materials including glass can be used. This work provides guidelines for the design, as well as the optimization and selection of thermoelectric and thermosyphon components for future high performance HSTE systems.United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Basic Energy Sciences (MIT S3TEC Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center)Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canad

Development and characterization of micro/nano structured surfaces for enhanced condensation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-168).Micro/nanostructures have long been recognized to have potential for heat transfer enhancement in phase-change processes by achieving extreme wetting properties, which is of great importance in a wide range of applications including thermal management, building environment control, water harvesting, desalination, and industrial power generation. This thesis focuses on the fundamental understanding of water vapor condensation on superhydrophobic surfaces, as well as the demonstration of such surfaces for enhanced condensation heat transfer performance. We first studied droplet-surface interactions during condensation on superhydrophobic surfaces to understand the emergent droplet wetting morphology. We demonstrated the importance of considering local energy barriers to understand the condensed droplet morphologies and showed nucleation-mediated droplet-droplet interactions can overcome these barriers to develop wetting states not predicted by global thermodynamic analysis. To minimize these droplet-droplet interactions and ensure the formation of favorable morphologies for enhanced condensation heat transfer, we show that the structure length scale needs to be minimized while ensuring the local energy barriers satisfy the morphology dependent criteria. This mechanistic understanding offers insight into the role of surface-structure length scale and provides a quantitative basis for designing surfaces optimized for condensation in engineered systems. Using our understanding of emergent droplet wetting morphology, we experimentally and numerically investigated the morphology dependent individual droplet growth rates. By taking advantage of well-controlled functionalized silicon nanopillars, the growth and shedding behavior of both suspended and partially wetting droplets on the same surface during condensation was observed. Environmental scanning electron microscopy was used to demonstrate that initial droplet growth rates of partially wetting droplets were 6 times larger than that of suspended droplets. A droplet growth model was developed to explain the experimental results and showed that partially wetting droplets had 4-6 times higher heat transfer rates than that of suspended droplets. Based on these findings, the overall performance enhancement created by surface nanostructuring was examined in comparison to a flat hydrophobic surface. These nanostructured surfaces had 56% heat flux enhancement for partially wetting droplet morphologies, and 71% heat flux degradation for suspended morphologies in comparison to flat hydrophobic surfaces. This study provides fundamental insights into the previously unidentified role of droplet wetting morphology on growth rate, as well as the need to design nanostructured surfaces with tailored droplet morphologies to achieve enhanced heat and mass transfer during dropwise condensation. To create a unified model for condensation capable of predicting the surface heat transfer for a variety of surface length scales, geometries, and condensation conditions, we incorporated the emergent droplet wetting morphology, individual droplet heat transfer, and size distribution. The model results showed a specific range of characteristic length scales (0.5 - 2 ptm) allowing for the formation of coalescence-induced jumping droplets with a 190% overall surface heat flux enhancement over conventional flat dropwise condensing surfaces. This work provided a unified model for dropwise condensation on micro/nanostructured superhydrophobic surfaces and offered guidelines for the selection of ideal structured surfaces to maximize heat transfer. Using the insights gained from the developed model and optimization, a scalable synthesis technique was developed to produce functionalized oxide nanostructures on copper surfaces capable of sustaining superhydrophobic condensation. Nanostructured copper oxide (CuO) films were formed via chemical oxidation in an alkaline solution resulting in dense arrays of sharp CuO nanostructures with characteristic heights and widths of -1 pm and -300 nm, respectively. Condensation on these surfaces was characterized using optical microscopy and environmental scanning electron microscopy to quantify the distribution of nucleation sites and elucidate the growth behavior of individual droplets with characteristic radii of -1 to 10 pm at supersaturations < 1.5. Comparison of the measured individual droplet growth behavior showed good agreement with our developed heat transfer model. We subsequently studied the macroscopic heat transfer performance during water condensation on superhydrophobic CuO tube surfaces in a custom built experimental chamber. The results experimentally demonstrated for the first time a 25% higher overall heat flux and 30% higher condensation heat transfer coefficient compared to state-of-the-art hydrophobic condensing surfaces at low supersaturations (<1.12). This work not only shows significant condensation heat transfer enhancement, but promises a low cost and scalable approach to increase efficiency for applications such as atmospheric water harvesting and dehumidification. Furthermore, the results offer insights and an avenue to achieve high flux superhydrophobic condensation. In addition to demonstrating enhanced heat transfer performance, we discovered electrostatic charging of jumping droplets on CuO. With the aid of electric fields, the charge on the droplets was quantified, and the mechanism for the charge accumulation was studied. We demonstrated that droplet charging was associated with the formation of the electric double layer at the droplet-surface interface, and subsequent separation during coalescence and jumping. The observation of droplet charge accumulation and electric double layer charge separation provides important insight into jumping droplet physics. Furthermore, this work is a starting point for more advanced approaches for enhancing jumping droplet surface performance by using external electric fields to control droplet jumping. Finally, we demonstrated electric-field-enhanced (EFE) condensation, whereby an external electric field was used to force charged departing droplets away from the surface and limit their return. With the CuO surfaces, we studied EFE condensation heat transfer performance during water condensation. The results experimentally demonstrated a 50% higher overall heat transfer coefficient compared to the no-field jumping surface at low supersaturations (<1.12). This work not only shows significant condensation heat transfer enhancement, it offers insights into new avenues for improving the performance of self-cleaning and anti-icing surfaces, as well as thermal diodes. This thesis presents improved fundamental understanding of wetting and condensation on micro/nanostructures as well as practical implementation of these structures for enhanced condensation heat transfer. The insights gained demonstrate the potential of new surface engineering approaches to improve the performance of various thermal management and energy production applications.by Nenad Miljkovic.Ph.D

Growth Dynamics During Dropwise Condensation on Nanostructured Superhydrophobic Surfaces

Condensation on superhydrophobic nanostructured surfaces offers new opportunities for enhanced energy conversion, efficient water harvesting, and high performance thermal management. Such surfaces are designed to be Cassie stable, which minimize contact line pinning and allow for passive shedding of condensed water droplets at sizes smaller than the capillary length. In this work, we investigated in situ water condensation on superhydrophobic nanostructured surfaces using environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM). The "Cassie stable" surfaces consisted of silane coated silicon nanopillars with diameters of 300 nm, heights of 6.1 μm, and spacings of 2 μm, but allowed droplets of distinct suspended (S) and partially wetting (PW) morphologies to coexist. With these experiments combined with thermal modeling of droplet behavior, the importance of initial growth rates and droplet morphology on heat transfer is elucidated. The effect of wetting morphology on heat transfer enhancement is highlighted with observed 6× higher initial growth rate of PW droplets compared to S droplets. Consequently, the heat transfer of the PW droplet is 4-6× higher than that of the S droplet. To compare the heat transfer enhancement, PW and S droplet heat transfer rates are compared to that of a flat superhydrophobic silane coated surface, showing a 56% enhancement for the PW morphology, and 71% degradation for the S morphology. This study provides insight into importance of local wetting morphology on droplet growth rate during superhydrophobic condensation, as well as the importance of designing CB stable surfaces with PW droplet morphologies to achieve enhanced heat transfer during dropwise condensation. Topics: Dynamics (Mechanics), CondensationUnited States. Department of Energy. Office of Science. Solid-State Solar Thermal Energy Conversion Cente

Scalable Graphene Coatings for Enhanced Condensation Heat Transfer

Water vapor condensation is commonly observed in nature and routinely used as an effective means of transferring heat with dropwise condensation on nonwetting surfaces exhibiting heat transfer improvement compared to filmwise condensation on wetting surfaces. However, state-of-the-art techniques to promote dropwise condensation rely on functional hydrophobic coatings that either have challenges with chemical stability or are so thick that any potential heat transfer improvement is negated due to the added thermal resistance of the coating. In this work, we show the effectiveness of ultrathin scalable chemical vapor deposited (CVD) graphene coatings to promote dropwise condensation while offering robust chemical stability and maintaining low thermal resistance. Heat transfer enhancements of 4× were demonstrated compared to filmwise condensation, and the robustness of these CVD coatings was superior to typical hydrophobic monolayer coatings. Our results indicate that graphene is a promising surface coating to promote dropwise condensation of water in industrial conditions with the potential for scalable application via CVD.United States. Office of Naval ResearchNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (Major Research Instrumentation Grant for Rapid Response Research (MRI-RAPID))National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant 1122374

Jumping-Droplet Electrostatic Energy Harvesting

Micro- and nanoscale wetting phenomena has been an active area of research due to its potential for improving engineered system performance involving phase change. With the recent advancements in micro/nanofabrication techniques, structured surfaces can now be designed to allow condensing coalesced droplets to spontaneously jump off the surface due to the conversion of excess surface energy into kinetic energy. In addition to being removed at micrometric length scales (~10 μm), jumping water droplets also attain a positive electrostatic charge (~10-100 fC) from the hydrophobic coating/condensate interaction. In this work, we take advantage of this droplet charging to demonstrate jumping-droplet electrostatic energy harvesting. The charged droplets jump between superhydrophobic copper oxide and hydrophilic copper surfaces to create an electrostatic potential and generate power during formation of atmospheric dew. We demonstrated power densities of ~15 pW/cm[superscript 2], which, in the near term, can be improved to ~1 μW/cm[superscript 2]. This work demonstrates a surface engineered platform that promises to be low cost and scalable for atmospheric energy harvesting and electric power generation.United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Basic Energy Sciences (Award DE-FG02-09ER46577)United States. Office of Naval ResearchNational Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant 1122374

Dynamics of Frost Growth on Vertical Superhydrophobic Surfaces

Superhydrophobic surfaces, which promote the efficient removal of condensing droplets prior to supercooling and freezing through coalescence induced jumping, have been shown to delay frosting significantly. The performance of fin and tube heat exchangers used in refrigeration and heat pump applications has the potential for improvement when coated with suitably designed superhydrophobic coatings. Currently, state-of-the-art (SOA) fins and their spacing are designed carefully to optimize pressure drop and heat transfer. The interaction amongst condensate droplets on adjacent fins can enhance the rate of condensate removal, and contribute to frost formation delay. Therefore, understanding the dynamics of droplet jumping within the confined space between fins can help in optimizing the design of superhydrophobic heat exchangers. In our work, condensation/frost interaction between two parallel superhydrophobic surfaces was studied experimentally. Frost growth on two aluminum superhydrophobic surfaces (150 mm × 90 mm) was tested under different conditions: surface temperature Tsurface = 0°C, -5°C, -10°C and -15°C; surface spacing of 1mm, 2mm, 4mm, 6mm, and 8mm; Tambient = 25°C, relative humidity ≈ 50%. Frost and condensate growth was recorded via high speed imaging from the side and top of the gap between the surfaces. Average droplet size and frost thickness was measured visually by analyzing high resolution and high contrast images of the leading edge of the cold plates. The variation of frost density on the surfaces during various stages of frosting was measured by continuously recording the mass of frost on the cold plates. Tests were also performed for bare aluminum surfaces under the same conditions for comparison. Results showed the normalized frost growth rate for untreated surfaces was the same regardless of the gap between the fins. The identical growth rate occurred due to the reduced access to moisture during the later stages of the frosting process when the air between the two frost faces is very cold and dry. We also observed that the frost growth rates for the superhydrophobic surfaces are 3X lower than the untreated surfaces due to the presence of jumping droplet condensation. Defrost times and water retention were characterized and shown to be 50% lower on the superhydrophobic surfaces compared to the bare aluminum surfaces. Additionally, high speed imaging showed that the droplets that do coalesce and jump from one surface travel to the adjacent surface, causing additional coalescence and jumping, and increasing the condensate removal rate. Our work not only contributes valuable data that can be used to optimize the design of coated evaporators, it elucidates the complex thermodynamics governing the condensation frosting process on SOA and next-generation superhydrophobic heat exchangers

Gas-Phase Temperature Mapping of Evaporating Microdroplets

Evaporation is a ubiquitous and complex phenomenon of importance to many natural and industrial systems. Evaporation occurs when molecules near the free interface overcome intermolecular attractions with the bulk liquid. As molecules escape the liquid phase, heat is removed, causing evaporative cooling. The influence of evaporative cooling on inducing a temperature difference with the surrounding atmosphere as well as within the liquid is poorly understood. Here, we develop a technique to overcome past difficulties encountered during the study of heterogeneous droplet evaporation by coupling a piezo-driven droplet generation mechanism to a controlled micro-thermocouple to probe microdroplet evaporation. The technique allowed us to probe the gas-phase temperature distribution using a micro-thermocouple (50 mu m) in the vicinity of the liquid-vapor interface with high spatial (+/- 10 mu m) and temporal (+/- 100 ms) resolution. We experimentally map the temperature gradient formed surrounding sessile water droplets having varying curvature dictated by the apparent advancing contact angle (100 degrees less than or similar to theta less than or similar to 165 degrees). The experiments were carried out at temperatures below and above ambient for a range of fixed droplet radii (130 mu m less than or similar to R less than or similar to 330 mu m). Our results provide a primary validation of the centuries-old theoretical framework underpinning heterogeneous droplet evaporation mediated by the working fluid, substrate, and gas thermophysical properties, droplet apparent contact angle, and droplet size. We show that microscale droplets residing on low-thermal-conductivity substrates such as glass absorb up to 8x more heat from the surrounding gas compared to droplets residing on high-thermal-conductivity substrates such as copper. Our work not only develops an experimental understanding of the heat transfer mechanisms governing droplet evaporation but also presents a powerful platform for the study and characterization of liquid-vapor transport at curved interfaces wetting and nonwetting advanced functional surfaces

Solar steam generation by heat localization

Currently, steam generation using solar energy is based on heating bulk liquid to high temperatures. This approach requires either costly high optical concentrations leading to heat loss by the hot bulk liquid and heated surfaces or vacuum. New solar receiver concepts such as porous volumetric receivers or nanofluids have been proposed to decrease these losses. Here we report development of an approach and corresponding material structure for solar steam generation while maintaining low optical concentration and keeping the bulk liquid at low temperature with no vacuum. We achieve solar thermal efficiency up to 85% at only 10 kW m[superscript −2]. This high performance results from four structure characteristics: absorbing in the solar spectrum, thermally insulating, hydrophilic and interconnected pores. The structure concentrates thermal energy and fluid flow where needed for phase change and minimizes dissipated energy. This new structure provides a novel approach to harvesting solar energy for a broad range of phase-change applications.United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Basic Energy Sciences (Energy Frontiers Research Center. Award DE-SC0001299)United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Basic Energy Sciences (Energy Frontiers Research Center. Award DE-FG02-09ER46577))United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-11-1-0174)Masdar Institute of Science & Technology - MIT Technology & Development ProgramNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canad

Ambient-mediated wetting on smooth surfaces

A consensus was built in the first half of the 20th century, which was further debated more than 3 decades ago, that the wettability and condensation mechanisms on smooth solid surfaces are modified by the adsorption of organic contaminants present in the environment. Recently, disagreement has formed about this topic once again, as many researchers have overlooked contamination due to its difficulty to eliminate. For example, the intrinsic wettability of rare earth oxides has been reported to be hydrophobic and non-wetting to water. These materials were subsequently shown to display dropwise condensation with steam. Nonetheless, follow on research demonstrated that the intrinsic wettability of rare earth oxides is hydrophilic and wetting to water, and that a transition to hydrophobicity occurs in a matter of hours-to-days as a consequence of the adsorption of volatile organic compounds from the ambient environment. The adsorption mechanisms, kinetics, and selectivity of these volatile organic compounds are empirically known to be functions of the substrate material and structure. However, these mechanisms, which govern the surface wettability, remain poorly understood. In this contribution, we introduce current research demonstrating the different intrinsic wettability of metals, rare earth oxides, and other smooth materials, showing that they are intrinsically hydrophilic. Then we provide details on research focusing on the wetting to non-wetting transition to hydrophobicity due to adsorption of volatile organic compounds. A state-of-the-art figure of merit mapping the wettability of different smooth solid surfaces to ambient exposure and surface carbon content is developed. In addition, we analyse recent works that address the wetting transitions so to shed light on how such processes affect droplet pinning and lateral adhesion. We then conclude with objective perspectives about research on wetting to non-wetting transitions on smooth solid surfaces in an attempt to raise awareness regarding surface contamination within the engineering, interfacial science, and physical chemistry domains

The Apparent Surface Free Energy of Rare Earth Oxides is Governed by Hydrocarbon Adsorption

The surface free energy of rare earth oxides (REOs) has been debated during the last decade, with some reporting REOs to be intrinsically hydrophilic and others reporting hydrophobic. Here, we investigate the wettability and surface chemistry of pristine and smooth REO surfaces, conclusively showing that hydrophobicity stems from wettability transition due to volatile organic compound adsorption. We show that, for indoor ambient atmospheres and well-controlled saturated hydrocarbon atmospheres, the apparent advancing and receding contact angles of water increase with exposure time. We examined the surfaces comprehensively with multiple surface analysis techniques to confirm hydrocarbon adsorption and correlate it to wettability transition mechanisms. We demonstrate that both physisorption and chemisorption occur on the surface, with chemisorbed hydrocarbons promoting further physisorption due to their high affinity with similar hydrocarbon molecules. This study offers a better understanding of the intrinsic wettability of REOs and provides design guidelines for REO-based durable hydrophobic coatings