Supported by International Copper Association (ICA)
Time: Oct., 2010 ~ Now
In order to reduce material cost and increase heat exchange capacity of compact heat exchanger, many air conditioner manufacturers try to employ fin-and-tube with small diameter (such as 5 mm) as alternative for fin-and-tube with 9.52 or 7 mm diameter. However, existent 5 mm diameter fin-and-tube has a low heat exchange capacity. The main object of this research is to find the configuration of fin-and-tube with best heat exchange and lowest air-side pressure drop, and to develop new correlations which are employed to establish simulation software for 5 mm diameter fin-and-tube heat exchanger.
Research steps
Research steps
1. Use CFD tools to simulate heat transfer performance and air-side pressure drop of fin-and-tube (5 mm diameter) with different configurations. The configuration parameters include: size of fin, fin pitch and types of enhancement for fin. The types of enhancement mainly contain: slit fin, louver fin, mixture fin and novel slit fin;
2. Through analyze simulation results, the configuration of fin-and-tube (5 mm diameter) with best heat transfer performance and lowest air-side pressure drop is founded;
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| CFD Calculation region of fin-and-tube |
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| Temperature of a louver fin |
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| Temperature of a mixture fin 1 |
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| Temperature of a mixture fin 2 |
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| Temperature of a mixture fin 3 |
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| Schematic of experimental system |
5. Based on these correlations, the simulation software for 5 mm diameter finned tube is established.
Publication:
[1] W. Wu, G.L. Ding, H.T. Hu, etal. Optimization of the fin for 5 mm diameter fin-and-tube condenser for air conditioner. The 11th Chinese Household Application conference, October, 2011, Nanjing, China.