Condensation of pure and near-azeotropic refrigerants in microfin tubes: A new computational procedure

Abstract

Microfin tubes are widely used in air cooled and water cooled heat exchangers for heat pump and refrigeration applications during condensation or evaporation of refrigerants. In order to design heat exchangers and to optimize heat transfer surfaces, accurate procedures for computing pressure drops and heat transfer coefficients are necessary. This paper presents a new simple model for the prediction of the heat transfer coefficient to be applied to condensation in horizontal microfin tubes of halogenated and natural refrigerants, pure fluids or nearly azeotropic mixtures. The updated model accounts for refrigerant physical properties, two-phase flow patterns in microfin tubes and geometrical characteristics of the tubes. It is validated against a data bank of 3115 experimental heat transfer coefficients measured in different independent laboratories all over the world including diverse inside tube geometries and different condensing refrigerants among which R22, R134a, R123, R410A and CO 2.