Origin of Thermocapillary Convection in Pool Boiling

The phenomenon of boiling heat transfer is broadly exists in many nature and technology fields, covering from human daily life to the manned space flight. The study of the phenomenon of boiling heat transfer is one of the most important research fields in science and engineering. In the present paper, different view-points on the origin of thermocapillary convection are discussed for the case of one component liquid pool boiling phenomenon in microgravity. It's pointed out that the key problem is how to model the temperature jump condition across the vapor-liquid interface with phase change. Therefore, some existed correlations on the temperature jump condition across the vapor-liquid interface with phase change are reviewed in detail. It's found that the non-equilibrium of phase change will result in an obvious temperature gradient at the interface and then thermocapillary convection around the vapor bubble is driven by the surface tension gradient due to the temperature gradient. However, both the mechanisms and the predictions of these models are very different from each other, and no one can be generally recognized up to now, further study is needed.