Condensation heat transfer and droplet departure characteristics under electric force with leaky dielectric assumption

To further improve the condensation heat transfer, the electric field is actively imposed to accelerate the detachment of the condensation droplets from the cold wall surface. In this paper, the research is conducted through the coupling of the pseudopotential model and the leaky dielectric model. By comparing the condensation heat transfer with and without the action of electric field, the detachment enhancement of the electric field on the condensed droplets is confirmed. The electric field with intensity of 1.6 E ₀ ( E ₀ is the reference intensity for Ca _E=1) saves the droplet growth and departure period by 48.48 % compared with case without electric field. Subsequently, the influence of the liquid conductivity, permittivity and deformation numbers on the enhancement of detachment by electric field was studied. The results show that the greater the electric conductivity of the liquid, the smaller the permittivity of the liquid, or the greater the deformation number, the stronger strengthening effect of the electric field on condensation detachment. Subsequently, this paper reveals the relation among the departure diameter, the gravitational acceleration and the electric field intensity through force balance analysis. Lastly a correlation formula of the departure diameter was proposed for the first time, with an average relative deviation of 1.48 % and coefficient of determination R ² is 0.998.