A critical review of the influence of lubricants on the boiling of refrigerants.

The paper presents a comprehensive summary about the boiling of refrigerant-oil mixtures. With respect to the lubricant influences on pool boiling, two primary theories were introduced to account for the refrigerant-lubricant pool boiling mechanisms. According to the flow boiling, various factors for enhancing the flow boiling were analysed. A possible improvement was made on a boiling model developed by Kattan and Thome to reveal the mechanisms of refrigerant-oil flow boiling, which is combined with refrigerant-lubricant mixture property predictions; the modified model was able to explain most of the phenomena observed in refrigerant-lubricant flow boiling.