Evaluation of Characteristics of Phase Change Heat Transfer in Ultrafine Cryoprobe

To reduce the invasiveness of cryosurgery, a miniaturized cryoprobe is necessary. The authors have developed an ultrafine cryoprobe for realizing low-invasive cryosurgery by local freezing. The objectives of this study are to estimate the heat transfer coefficient and investigate the characteristics of the phase change heat transfer in the ultrafine cryoprobe. This cryoprobe has a double-tube structure consisting of two stainless steel microtubes. The outer diameter of the cryoprobe was 550 μm. The alternative Freon HFC-23, which has a boiling point of −82 ̊C at 0.1 MPa, was used as a refrigerant. To evaluate the characteristics of boiling flow in the cryoprobe, the heat transfer coefficient was estimated. The derived heat transfer coefficient was higher than that obtained from the conventional correlation. Additionally, a bubble expansion model was introduced to evaluate the heat transfer mode of the phase change flow in the ultrafine cryoprobe. This model can estimate the liquid film thickness during the expansion of a single bubble in a microchannel. The experimentally measured wall superheat was much lower than that obtained from the model. Therefore, this result also implied that the heat transfer mode in the ultrafine cryoprobe should be nucleate boiling.