Augmentation of pool boiling heat transfer on tube bundles using metal foam

•Metal foam embedded tube is proposed to improve pool boiling heat transfer.•Metal foam tubes offered 100–212% enhancement in heat transfer coefficient.•Metal foam tubes provided a 5–14 °C reduction in wall temperature.•Porosity showed a significant effect on metal foams’ heat transfer performance. Pool boiling on a tube bundle is one of the most important heat transfer modes in several industrial applications, including steam generators, shell and tube heat exchangers for waste heat recovery, and desalination. Although several enhanced tubes (e.g., external micro-finned tubes) have been extensively studied and commercialized, the studies that pertain to the metal foam enhanced tube bundles are limited in the open literature. The objective of the present study is to perform an experimental study to analyze the pool boiling heat transfer characteristics of a metal foam tube bundle and compare its performance with that of a tube bundle with no enhancement. The performance of the metal foam tube bundles with different porosities (81%, 75%, and 62%) is compared against the conventional bare tube bundle. The results showed that the heat transfer coefficients of the metal foam tube bundles are 100–212% higher than those of the bare tube bundle. Among the different porosities, metal foam with 75% porosity showed a higher heat transfer coefficient. Furthermore, the wall temperature of the metal foam tubes is nearly 5–14⁰C lower than that of the bare tubes. When compared with a tube pitch of 25.4 mm, a tube pitch of 19.05 mm showed a maximum of 9% and 14% enhancement in bare and metal foam tube bundles, respectively.