Heterogeneous boiling-up of superheated liquid at achievable superheat threshold

The classical theory of homogeneous nucleation describes well the superheat threshold observed in experiments. It may be assumed therefore that homogeneous boiling-up of a liquid takes place in experiments, and the theory has been verified experimentally well. The streak photography used in this study showed that boiling-up of a superheated liquid at the threshold of the achievable superheat occurs at a limited number of surface fluctuation centers in a vessel, rather than in the bulk as one would expect with homogeneous nucleation. Thus, the homogeneous theory, which rather accurately describes the heterogeneous threshold of the achievable superheat, obviously is not confirmed in experiments.