A Meta-Analysis Review: Nanoparticles as a Gateway to Optimized Boiling Surfaces

Pool boiling is essential in many industrial manufacturing applications. In addition, it can become critical in the journey towards improving energy generation efficiency and accomplishing the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 via new or traditional power generation applications. The effectiveness of boiling is governed by the bubble cycle. The chemistry and topographical features of the surface being heated have been found to highly impact the boiling performance, such as in the case of pool boiling enhancement when employing hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces via nano/micro heater surface modification. Nevertheless, it is questionable how feasible it is to create these surfaces for large-scale applications due to their manufacturing and maintenance cost and complexity. The current work assesses whether the use of nanoparticles in traditional coolants could potentially unlock the mass production of optimised heating surface modification through a metadata literature review analysis. It was discovered that self-assembled layers created as a result of the deposition of nanoparticles in coolants undergoing pool boiling seem to behave most similarly to manufactured hydrophilic surfaces. The creation of enhanced patterned-heat transfer surfaces is shown to be possible via the use of a combination of different nanoparticle suspensions in coolants.