Experimental study of propane condensation heat transfer and pressure drop in semicircular channel printed circuit heat exchanger

Abstract

In this study, the propane condensation heat transfer and pressure drop performance of a printed circuit heat exchanger was experimentally investigated. 30 experimental cases with different mass flux, saturation pressures and vapor quality were conducted. By analyzing these data, a heat transfer correlation similar to the Akers et al. correlation was presented [19]. The newly proposed correlation has a mean square percent error of 5.9% over the equivalent Reynolds number range from 690 to 5600. For the condensing pressure drop correlation, the Lockhart and Martinelli correlation showed the best performance [27].