Experimental study of the falling film evaporation coefficients of R290 in a horizontal enhanced tube array

Abstract

In this study, the falling film evaporation heat transfers of R290 on an array composed of five enhancement horizontal tubes (groove tubes) are studied. The tests are performed at constant saturation temperatures 5.5 °C with change of heat flux from 10 to 40 kW/m2. The film Reynolds number ranges from 200 to 2200 and the film flow rate of refrigerant is between 100 and 660 kg/h.The results show that the film flow rate and heat flux have significant effects on R290 falling film evaporation heat transfer coefficients (HTCs) of the tubes in the tube array. With decreasing the film flow rate on the five tubes the tube HTCs display two stages, a plateau stage and a sharp drop stage. The heat transfer coefficients firstly keep more or less constant at the plateau stage and then decreasing rapidly. At the same nominal film Reynolds number the tube averaged heat transfer coefficients of tube No. 1 to tube No. 5 decrease in order of the increasing tube number from top to bottom of the array. The falling film evaporation HTC of R290 on single enhanced tube is about 4.5 times of single smooth tube HTC, and the HTCs of the enhanced tube array is higher than single smooth tube by more than 2.5 times. In addition, the R290 HTCs of the tube array are higher than those of R134a for the same tube array in the plateau region by about 25%. It is found that at high heat flux of 30–40 kW/m2, the heat transfer coefficient variation with film Reynolds number of the lower enhanced tubes in the tube array exhibits severe undulating characteristics.