Performance improvement for chilled water air conditioning cooling coils with various dimple fin geometries

Abstract

The present research inspected the thermal and flow behavior of finned coiled tube heat exchangers in crossflow for chilled water air conditioning systems. The investigation variables cover the impacts of several variables, such as fin dimple shape, the number of fins, and the Reynolds number of water and air sides on the thermal-hydraulic aspects of a finned cooling coiled tube heat exchanger. The goal is to enhance this famous finned cooling coiled tube heat exchanger using dimples concerning the same coiled tube heat exchanger without dimples. Six test specimens were fabricated, three with fin dimple geometries as sharp-sided triangle dimples, curved-sided triangle dimples, and teardrop dimples. The other specimens with three different fin numbers 140, 155, and 170. The test runs were experimented in a transparent air duct with air Reynolds numbers ranging from 1540 to 6205, while the chilled water flow side has experimented with Reynolds numbers ranging from 3350 to 16250. The findings revealed that a higher Nusselt number and flow area goodness factor is achieved by a heat exchanger (D) with a curved-sided triangle fin dimple shape. The energy efficiency ratio for a cooling coil with a fin number of 170 is higher than that of cooling coils with fin numbers 140 and 155 by approximately 24.68% and 12.94%, respectively. Correlations of energy efficiency ratio, effectiveness, flow area goodness factor, and friction factor are extracted according to the experimental results with deviations.