There is presently great interest in use of mini/micro channels with boiling in heat exchangers and for heat dissipation from microelectronic systems. Design of such devices requires the ability to predict critical heat flux (CHF). It is therefore desirable to know the applicability of general correlations for CHF in conventional tubes to minichannels. The most verified general correlations are those of Katto and Ohno and of Shah. In this study, these correlations were compared to an extensive database with 55 data sets from 30 sources, which included single tubes and multichannels with diameters from 0.13 mm to 3.0 mm, 15 diverse fluids (water, halocarbon refrigerants, hydrocarbons, and cryogens), reduced pressures from 0.009 to 0.887, and flowrates from10 to 41810 kg/m(2)-s. The correlations of Shah and of Katto andOhno gavemeanabsolute deviations of 18.9 and 33.2%, respectively. To put the performance of these general correlations in perspective, the same database was also compared to two of the best correlations specifically developed for minichannels.