Experimental Investigation of Evaporation Heat Transfer Inside Horizontal Micro-Fin Tubes

Abstract

Tubes with their features optimized to enhance heat transfer are routinely used in industry. A series of experimental investigations of evaporation heat transfer of widely used refrigerants inside a horizontal micro-fin cooper tube have been conducted and are reported here. The micro-fin tubes have different geometric parameters with inner diameter ranging from 4.98mm to 7.14mm. The helix angle of the tested tubes ranges from 18.858° to 35°. The apex angle of the tested tubes ranges from 11° to 40°. In addition, other geometric parameters of the tubes vary, such as the fin height, fin pitch and starts. Evaporation heat transfer experiments were conducted with the tubes and the working fluids include R22, R32 and R410A. The evaporation experiments were taken at a constant temperature of 6 °C for R22 and R410A, but 10 °C for R32. Moreover, the working conditions of the experiments varied with the mass flux ranging from 100 kg/(m2.s) to 400 kg/(m2.s). For the evaporation experiments, the inlet vapor quality is set as 0.1, while the outlet vapor quality is set as 0.9. The experimental data reveals that tubes with different geometric parameters have different heat transfer performance. The heat transfer coefficients, the reduced pressure and the changing trend of the heat transfer coefficients vary among these tubes. The experimental data has been compared with available models in the literature and an analysis of the effect of geometric parameters on the performance of the tubes undertaken. The influence of each geometric parameter on the heat transfer performance of the micro-fin tube has been analyzed and is reported.