In this paper, an attempt has been made to document the literature on metastability, a phenomenon associated with boiling of liquids. The available correlations for the prediction of metastability have been presented and their range of applications has also been discussed. In a capillary tube, the metastability significantly influences the refrigerant mass flow rate. A comparison of Heurta et al. (2007) and Li et al. (1990) studies on the metastable flow in adiabatic capillary tubes has been made. However, the only study on the metastable flow through diabatic capillary tubes was conducted by Chen and Lin (2001). In the end, a simplified mathematical model based on the previous works has also been presented to give the readers an insight into the numerical design of adiabatic capillary tubes, considering the phenomenon of metastability.

Units: SI