This study considers spray cooling starting at surface temperatures of about 1200 °C and finishing at the Leidenfrost temperature. Cooling is in the film boiling regime. The paper uses experimental techniques for the study of which spray parameters are necessary for good prediction of spray cooling intensity. The research is based on experiments with water and air-mist nozzles. The following spray parameters were measured together with a heat transfer coefficient: water flowrate, water impingement density, impact pressure, droplet size and velocity. Derived parameters as droplet kinetic energy, droplet momentum and droplet Reynolds number are used in the tested correlations as well. Ten combinations of spray parameters used for correlation functions for the heat transfer coefficient (HTC) are studied and discussed. Correlation functions for prediction of HTC are presented and it is shown which spray parameters are necessary for reliable computation of HTC. The best results were obtained when the parameters impact pressure and water impingement density were used together. It was proven that the correlations based only on water impingement density, which are the most frequent in literature, can not provide reliable results.

Spray cooling of hot steel surfaces is an inherent part of continuous casting and heat treatment. When we consider the temperature interval between room temperature and for instance 1000 °C, different boiling regimes can be observed. Spray cooling intensity rapidly changes with the surface temperature. Secondary cooling in continuous casting starts when the surface temperature is well above a thousand degrees Celsius and a film boiling regime can be observed. The cooled surface is protected from the direct impact of droplets by the vapour layer. As the surface temperature decreases, the vapour layer is less stable and for certain temperatures the vapour layer collapses, droplets reach the hot surface and heat flux suddenly jumps enormously. It is obvious that the described effect has a great effect on control of cooling. The surface temperature which indicates the sudden change in the cooling intensity is the Leidenfrost temperature. The Leidenfrost temperature in spray cooling can occur anywhere between 150 °C and over 1000 °C and depends on the character of the spray. This paper presents an experimental study and shows function for prediction of the Leidenfrost temperature based on spray parameters. Water impingement density was found to be the most important parameter. This parameter must be combined with information about droplet size and velocity to produce a good prediction of the Leidenfrost temperature.

To achieve the required mechanical properties in the heat treatment of steel, it is necessary to have an adequate cooling rate and to achieve the desired final temperature of the product. This should be achieved with one cooling unit for different product sizes. In order to provide the high variability of the cooling system, different types of nozzles are used in modern cooling systems. Designers often use simplified, inaccurate correlations to predict the heat transfer coefficient, resulting in the oversizing of the designed cooling system or failure to provide the required cooling regime. This typically results in longer commissioning times and higher manufacturing costs of the new cooling system. Accurate information about the required cooling regime and the heat transfer coefficient of the designed cooling is critical. This paper presents a design approach based on laboratory measurements. Firstly, the way to find or validate the required cooling regime is presented. The paper then focuses on nozzle selection and presents laboratory measurements that provide accurate heat transfer coefficients as a function of position and surface temperature for different cooling configurations. Numerical simulations using the measured heat transfer coefficients allow the optimum design to be found for different product sizes.

A basic energy balance that includes phase change has been used to describe the boiling heat transfer process. By using the differential form of this energy balance, the relative change in the heat transfer coefficient can be determined when the surface and coolant temperature change. This represents a general solution to the boiling heat transfer problem under high flux conditions where fully mixed thermal boundary layer exists, although the solution procedure is approximate. The results agree quite well with experimental data. Further work remains to prescribe the heat transfer process near the critical heat flux and Leidenfrost point. This approach vastly reduces the empiricism and data required for boiling heat transfer processes, and also existing data can be used to generalize to a wide range of conditions.