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A numerical study of heat transfer and pressure drop of hydrocarbon mixture refrigerant during boiling in vertical rectangular minichannel.

Author(s) : YU J., MA H., JIANG Y.

Type of article: Article

Summary

Plate-fin heat exchangers (PFHE) are probably the most common type of heat exchangers. However, studies on the heat transfer performance and pressure drop of hydrocarbon mixture refrigerant in a PFHE have rarely been conducted. In this paper, boiling heat transfer and friction pressure drop characteristics of hydrocarbon mixture refrigerant in PFHE were investigated numerically. A model was established on boiling flow in vertical rectangular minichannel, and also validated by the experiment data from literature. Results indicated that the boiling heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop increased with the increase of quality and mass flux. However, they were slightly impacted by the heat flux. This was because that the main boiling mechanism was forced convective boiling, while the effect of nucleation boiling is slight on the heat transfer. The simulation data were compared with some well-known heat transfer and pressure drop correlations. The Liu and Winterton’s correlation showed the best agreement with a mean absolute deviation mostly less than ±15% for heat transfer. The calculation on Mishima and Hibiki’s correlation was less than the simulated results because that the influence of heat flux was ignored for friction pressure drop in that. Meanwhile, a new correlation for pressure drop was developed with deviation less than ±15%. The presented research is helpful in designing more effective PFHE.

Details

  • Original title: A numerical study of heat transfer and pressure drop of hydrocarbon mixture refrigerant during boiling in vertical rectangular minichannel.
  • Record ID : 30020816
  • Languages: English
  • Source: Applied Thermal Engineering - vol. 112
  • Publication date: 2017/02/05
  • DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2016.10.151

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