If the heat flux of a boiling system is higher than the critical heat flux (CHF) of the system, the bulk fluid may boil, or in some cases, regions of the bulk fluid may boil where the fluid travels in small channels. Thus large bubbles form, sometimes blocking the passage of the fluid. This results in a departure from nucleate boiling (DNB) in which steam bubbles no longer break away from the solid surface of the channel, bubbles dominate the channel or surface, and the heat flux dramatically decreases. Vapor essentially insulates the bulk liquid from the hot surface.
During DNB, the surface temperature must therefore increase substantially above the bulk fluid temperature in order to maintain a high heat flux. Avoiding the CHF is an engineering problem in heat transfer applications, such as nuclear reactors, where fuel plates must not be allowed to overheat. DNB may be avoided in practice by increasing the pressure of the fluid, increasing its flow rate, or by utilizing a lower temperature bulk fluid which has a higher CHF. If the bulk fluid temperature is too low or the pressure of the fluid is too high, nucleate boiling is however not possible.
DNB is also known as transition boiling, unstable film boiling, and partial film boiling. For water boiling as shown on the graph, transition boiling occurs when the temperature difference between the surface and the boiling water is approximately  above the T. This corresponds to the high peak and the low peak on the boiling curve. The low point between transition boiling and film boiling is the Leidenfrost point.
During transition boiling of water, the bubble formation is so rapid that a vapor film or blanket begins to form at the surface. However, at any point on the surface, the conditions may oscillate between film and nucleate boiling, but the fraction of the total surface covered by the film increases with increasing temperature difference. As the thermal conductivity of the vapor is much less than that of the liquid, the convective heat transfer coefficient and the heat flux reduces with increasing temperature difference.