Experimental Factors and Techniques for Pool Boiling Heat Transfer Enhancement: A Critical Review

ABSTRACT This review presents a comprehensive assessment of active strategies for enhancing pool boiling heat transfer, with a focus on techniques that do not rely solely on the boiling surface modification. It examines a broad range of methodologies including fluid additives, external fields, mechanical interventions, and thermal‐geometric tuning that influence fluid flow guidance, bubble dynamics, and phase‐change behavior. These approaches aim to mitigate the incipient boiling hysteresis, increase the heat transfer coefficient (HTC), and improve the critical heat flux (CHF), particularly when employing dielectric coolants with inherently poor thermophysical properties. The present work also highlights the limited availability of robust data sets for each enhancement technique, which hampers the development of predictive models and design tools for advanced thermal management systems. The main implementation variables such as fluid properties, boiling surface size and orientation, enhancement geometry and scale, and operating pressure, among others, are often underreported or inconsistently characterized in the literature. This gap restricts the applicability of existing findings to the design of advanced cooling solutions for temperature‐sensitive electronic and power devices. Furthermore, this review addresses practical considerations including thermal performance, manufacturability, reliability, and durability over time. Where available, these factors are critically evaluated, and current challenges are outlined. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research to advance the understanding and integration of non‐surface‐based boiling enhancement techniques in modern cooling technologies.