Abstract

This investigation contributes to a better understanding of condensation heat transfer in horizontal non-circular microchannels. For this purpose, the conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy have been numerically solved in both phases (liquid and vapor), and all the more, so the film thickness analytical expression has been established. Numerical results relative to variations of the meniscus curvature radius, the condensate film thickness, the condensation length and heat transfer coefficients, are analyzed in terms of the influencing physical and geometrical quantities. The effect of the microchannel shapes on the average Nusselt number is highlighted by studying condensation of steam insquare, rectangular and equilateral triangular microchannels with the same hydraulic diameter of 250 μm.

Highlights

  • Understanding the heat transfer behavior of condensation flow in microchannels is important for a broad variety of engineering applications

  • These correlations are proposed for condensation heat transfer in microchannels and macrochannels

  • The numerical model characterizing local heat and mass transfer for condensation in microchannels has been developed by including the effects of wall and liquid vapor interface shear stresses, surface tension, pressure forces, contact angle, etc

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Summary

Introduction

Understanding the heat transfer behavior of condensation flow in microchannels is important for a broad variety of engineering applications. Most of the physical and mathematical models that focused on annular condensation heat transfer in circular channel were developed in the previous works. Begg et al [2] studied annular film condensation in a small circular tube to predict the shape of the liquid-vapor interface along a miniature tube leading to the complete condensation phenomena in small diameter tubes. LouahliaGualous and Asbik [3] conducted a numerical model predicting heat transfer for condensation of pure refrigerant and binary mixture in a mini-tube. Miscevic et al [4] developed a stationary condensation capillary flow model based on the separate flow approach by taking into account the coupling between a cylindrical interface and a hemispherical interface. Ribeiro et al [5]

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