Shell-Side Flow Condensation Heat Transfer on Three-Dimensional Enhanced Surface

Author(s):  
Wei Li ◽  
Desong Yang ◽  
Jingxiang Chen ◽  
Zhichuan Sun ◽  
Jiacheng Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract An experimental investigation of shell-side flow condensation was performed on advanced three-dimensional surface-enhanced tubes, including a herringbone micro-fin tube and a newly-developed 1-EHT tube. An equivalent plain tube was also tested for performance comparison. All the test tubes have similar geometry parameters (inner diameter 11.43mm, outer diameter 12.7mm). Tests were conducted using R410A as the working fluid at a condensation saturation temperature of 45·C, covering the mass flux range of 10-55 kg/(m2·s) with an inlet quality of 0.8 and an outlet quality of 0.1. Experimental results showed that the plain tube exhibits a better condensation heat transfer performance when compared to the enhanced tubes. Moreover, the mass flux has a significant influence on the best transfer coefficient for shell-side condensation. A new prediction model based on the Cavallini's equation was developed to predict the condensing coefficient where the mean absolute error is less than 4%.

Author(s):  
Desong Yang ◽  
Zhichuan Sun ◽  
Wei Li

Abstract An experimental investigation of shell-side flow condensation heat transfer was performed on advanced three-dimensional surface-enhanced tubes, including a herringbone micro-fin tube and a newly-developed 1-EHT tube. An equivalent plain tube was also tested for performance comparison. All of the test tubes have similar geometry parameters (inner diameter 11.43mm, outer diameter 12.7mm). Tests were conducted using R410A as the working fluid at a condensation saturation temperature of 45 °C, covering the mass flux range of 10–55 kg/(m2·s) with an inlet quality of 0.8 and an outlet quality of 0.1. Experimental results showed that the plain tube exhibits a better condensation heat transfer performance when compared to the enhanced tubes. Moreover, the mass flux has a significant influence on the heat transfer coefficient for shell-side condensation: the condensation heat transfer coefficient of plain tube decreases when the refrigerant mass flux becomes larger, while the heat transfer coefficient of herringbone tube shows a non-monotonic trend and the heat transfer coefficient of the 1-EHT tube gets higher with increasing refrigerant mass flux. Besides, A new prediction model based on the Cavallini’s equation was developed to predict the condensing coefficient of the three test tubes, and the mean absolute error of the improved equations is less than 4%.


Author(s):  
Wei Li ◽  
Chuancai Zhang ◽  
Zhichuan Sun ◽  
Zhichun Liu ◽  
Lianxiang Ma ◽  
...  

Experimental investigation was performed to measure the evaporation heat transfer coefficients of R410A inside three three-dimensional enhanced tubes (1EHT-1, 1EHT-2 and 4LB). The inner and outer enhanced surface of the 4LB tube is composed by arrays of grooves and square pits, while 1EHT-1 tube and 1EHT-2 tube consist of longitudinal ripples and dimples of different depths. All these tubes have an inner diameter of 8.32 mm and an outer diameter of 9.52 mm. Experiment operational conditions are conducted as follows: the saturation temperature is 279 K, the vapor quality ranges from 0.2 to 0.8, and the mass flux varies from 160 kg/(m2·s) to 380 kg/(m2·s). With the mass flux increasing, the heat transfer coefficient increases accordingly. The heat transfer coefficient of 1EHT-2 is the highest of all three tubes, and that of 1EHT-1 is the lowest. The heat transfer coefficient of 4LB ranks between the 1EHT-1 and 1EHT-2 tube. The reason is that the heat transfer areas of the 1EHT-2 and 4LB tube are larger than that of 1EHT-1 and interfacial turbulence is enhanced in 1EHT-2.


Author(s):  
Xiang Ma ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
Chuan-cai Zhang ◽  
Zhi-chuan Sun ◽  
David J. Kukulka ◽  
...  

Abstract An experimental investigation of condensation and evaporation heat transfer characteristics was performed in 15.88-mm-OD and 12.7-mm-OD smooth and three-dimensional enhanced tubes (1EHT, 3EHT) using R134A and R410A as the working fluid. The enhanced surface of the 1EHT tube is made up of dimples and a series of petal arrays; while the 3EHT tube is made up of rectangular cavities. Evaluations are performed at a saturation temperature of 45 °C, over the quality range of 0.8–0.2 for condensation; while for evaporation the saturation temperature was 6 °C and the quality ranged from 0.2 to 0.8. For condensation, the enhancement ratio (enhanced tube/smooth tube) of the heat transfer coefficients was 1.42–1.95 for the mass flux ranging from 80 to 200 kg/m2s; while for evaporation, the heat transfer enhancement ratio is 1.05–1.42 for values of mass flux that range from 50 to 180 kg/m2s. Furthermore, the 1EHT tube provides the best condensation and evaporation heat transfer performance, for both working fluids at the mass flux considered. This performance is due to the dimples in the enhanced surface that produce interface turbulence; additionally, the increased surface roughness causes additional disturbances and secondary flows near the boundary, producing higher heat fluxes. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the heat transfer enhancement of two enhanced tubes when using R134A and R410A as a function of mass flux, saturation temperature, and tube diameter. As a result of this study, it was determined that the heat transfer coefficient decreases with an increase in saturation temperature and tube diameter.


Author(s):  
Xiao-peng Zhou ◽  
David J. Kukulka ◽  
Jing Li ◽  
Jian-Jun Sun ◽  
Wei Li

Heat transfer enhancement plays an important role in improving energy efficiency and developing high performance thermal systems. Phase-change heat transfer processes take place in thermal systems; typically heat transfer enhanced tubes are used in these systems and they are designed to increase heat transfer coefficients in evaporation and condensation. Enhanced heat transfer tubes are widely used in refrigeration and air-conditioning applications in order to reduce cost and create a smaller footprint of the application. Microfins, roughness and dimples are often incorporated into the inner surface of tubes in order to enhance heat transfer performance. Under many conditions, enhanced surface tubes can recover more energy and provide the opportunity to advance the design of many heat transfer products. Convective condensation heat transfer and pressure loss characteristics were investigated for R410A on the outside of: (i) a smooth tube (outer diameter 12.7 mm); (ii) an external herringbone tube (fin root diameter 12.7 mm); and (iii) the 1EHT tube (outer diameter 12.7 mm) for very low mass fluxes. Data was obtained for values of mass flux ranging from 8 to 50 kg/(m2 s); at a saturation temperature of 318 K; with an inlet quality of 0.8 (±0.05) and an outlet quality of 0.1 (±0.05). In a comparison of heat transfer at a low mass flux, both the 1EHT tube and the herringbone tube did not perform as well as the smooth tube. And it’s difficult to analyze the reason for this strange phenomenon.


Author(s):  
J. S. Shin ◽  
M. H. Kim

By using unique experimental techniques and careful construction of the experimental apparatus, the characteristics of the local heat transfer were investigated using the condensing R134a two-phase flow, in horizontal single mini-channels. The circular channels (Dh = 0.493, 0.691, and 1.067 mm) and rectangular channels (Dh = 0.494, 0.658, and 0.972 mm) were tested and compared. Tests were performed for a mass flux of 100, 200, 400, and 600 kg/m2s, a heat flux of 5 to 20 kW/m2, and a saturation temperature of 40°C. In this study, effect of heat flux, mass flux, vapor qualities, hydraulic diameter, and channel geometry on flow condensation were investigated and the experimental local condensation heat transfer coefficients are shown. The experimental data of condensation Nusselt number are compared with existing correlations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 98 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Li ◽  
Zhi-chuan Sun ◽  
Rui-heng Guo ◽  
Xiang Ma ◽  
Zhi-chun Liu ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Yu Guo ◽  
Zong-bao Gu ◽  
Zahid Ayub ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
Xiang Ma ◽  
...  

Abstract In this paper, the condensation heat transfer characteristics of R134a inside enhanced tubes using two type of surface structures with different materials was investigated, which were then compared with plain tubes under the same test conditions. The enhanced tubes were: 1EHTa tube with dimpled and petal arrays structure and 1EHTb tube with protrusion and similar petal arrays structure. The experiment was conducted for a mass flux ranging from 100 to 200 kg m−2 s−1 with saturation temperature of 318 K. The inlet and outlet vapor qualities were fixed at 0.8 and 0.2, respectively. The test tubes had the same outer diameter of 12.7 mm. Results showed that the dimpled and protruded surface tubes enhanced the convection condensation heat transfer and the heat transfer coefficient was 1.4 to 1.6 times higher than that of the smooth tube. Heat transfer enhancement of the 1EHTa and 1EHTb tube was mainly due to the complex roughness surface structures that created swirling and increased the interface turbulence. Enhanced tubes exhibited higher performance factors compared to the smooth tube. The average performance factor was 1.3–1.5. As the flow rate increases, there is no significant increase in the condensation heat transfer coefficient. The pressure drop penalty increased with mass flux. Compared with smooth tube, the pressure drop penalty of enhanced tube was larger.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (02) ◽  
pp. 1650013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nae-Hyun Kim

Enhanced tubes are widely used in shell and tube condensers of refrigeration, air-conditioning and process industries because of their high heat transfer performance. In this study, condensation heat transfer tests were conducted for four three-dimensional enhanced tubes having different fin density and fin height using R-134a. The satuartion temperature was 40[Formula: see text]C. The heat transfer was significantly enhanced by the present enhanced geometry. At 5[Formula: see text]K wall subcooling, the enhancement ratio is 6.3 for 1654[Formula: see text]fpm, 4.6 for 1575[Formula: see text]fpm, 4.0 for 1496[Formula: see text]fpm and 3.3 for 1102[Formula: see text]fpm tubes. Within the geometric variation of the present study, the condensation heat transfer coefficient increased with the increase of fin density and of fin height. The heat transfer coefficients of the 1654[Formula: see text]fpm tube were approximately the same as those of the commercial three-dimensional enhanced tube Turbo-C.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document