Experimental investigation of condensation heat transfer and pressure drop of R-134a flowing inside dimpled tubes with different dimpled depths

Abstract

An experimental investigation is conducted to determine the effect of dimpled depth on the condensation heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop of R-134a flowing inside dimpled tubes. The test condenser is a double tube heat exchanger where the refrigerant flows inside and water flows in the annulus. The inner tube is a 1500 mm long and 8.1 mm inside diameter. The experiments are carried out for one smooth tube and three dimpled tubes having dimpled depth of 0.5, 0.75, and 1.0 mm. For each test tube, several test runs are performed over mass flux range of 300–500 kg/m2s, heat flux range of 10–20 kW/m2, and condensing temperature range of 40–50 °C. The experimental results reveal that the dimpled tube presents the significant heat transfer enhancement and pressure drop penalty. The tube with the highest dimpled depth yields the highest heat transfer enhancement and pressure drop penalty up to 83% and 892% higher than those of the smooth tube, respectively. Additionally, the overall performance of dimpled tube is evaluated in term of efficiency index. The new correlations including the effect of dimpled depth, dimpled pitch, and helical pitch on the Nusselt number and friction factor of R-134a in dimpled tube are developed.