A modified form of Carey's method for predicting the heat transfer to a turbulent falling film is presented. The new model is successfully tested against experimental data as well as other models. This method utilizes an optimization technique along with the Romberg integration to determine two universal constants for the modified turbulent diffusivisity model. The results show that in spite of its relative simplicity, the new model is a fairly accurate one, having an overall average error of less than 9. © 1990, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.