The vapor-liquid-solid (V-L-S) flow boiling evaporator has the features of fouling preventing and heat-transfer enhancing. However, the mechanisms of flow and heat-transfer are still not well understood due to the system complex and the limitation of the measuring methods due to the characteristic of opaque of the system in practice. In this paper, a charge coupled device (CCD) measuring system is developed to investigate the hydrodynamic characteristics including the axial profiles of solid holdup and of solid velocity in a V-L-S three-phase natural circulating flow boiling system. The CCD measuring technique makes the three-phase qualitative observation and quantitative research possible. The heat-transfer characteristic of this system is also studied. The main results are as follows. The distributions of solid holdup and velocity are not uniform along the axial direction of the heating tube and both in liquid-solid two-phase region and in V-L-S three-phase region; however, the particle velocity in V-L-S three-phase region is much higher than that in liquid -solid two-phase region in heating tube. When increasing the heat flux, the solid holdup first increases and then decreases and the solid velocity gradually increases in heating tube. But in circulating tube, both the solid holdup and the solid velocity gradually increase. With the increase of the volume of added solid particles, the measured local solid holdup increases in both tubes; however, the variation of the solid velocity with the increase of the solid particles shows a characteristic of the wave and the general tendency is climbing for both tubes. The solid particles holdup in heating tube is always larger than that in circulating tube and the solid velocity in heating tube is lower than that in circulating tube. The presence of solid particles enhances the boiling evaporation process. The beat-transfer coefficient of the system increases with the increase of the heat flux and the volume of added solid particles. These research results provide some valuable references for the academic interest and for the industry application of this fouling preventing and heat-transfer enhancing installation. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.