Effect of heat transfer area distribution on frosting performance of refrigerator evaporator

Abstract

The present study investigates the effect of the distribution of available heat transfer area on the thermohydraulic behavior of a typical fin-and-tube type evaporator used in a domestic frost-free refrigerator. Previous studies in the literature have not explored the effect of the number of fin rows and fin pitch distribution across the fin rows on the performance of fan-supplied evaporator geometries under frosting. The present study attempts to address this by developing a thermohydraulic model of the evaporator to predict the heat transfer rate, pressure drop and frost formation. A distributed evaporator model is developed by dividing the evaporator into individual control volumes and the balance equations are applied along with a suitable semi-empirical frost growth model to predict the rate of frost formation. Experiments were performed in a purpose-built test facility to validate the numerical model. The developed model is employed to compare different heat exchanger geometries with a constant area but varying in total fin rows and fin pitch distribution. Results show that distributing the available heat transfer area among a higher number of fin rows results in longer successive defrost intervals. However, the evaporator occupies more volume. For a given heat transfer area and fin rows, longer operating time can be achieved by selecting fin pitches that provide uniform blockage ratio across the fin rows. It is observed that for a specific fin pitch at the leading row, reducing the fin pitch linearly across the fin rows resulted in uniform blockage ratio across the fin rows.