TY - JOUR
T1 - A model for air-to-refrigerant microchannel condensers with variable tube and fin geometries
AU - Huang, Long
AU - Aute, Vikrant
AU - Radermacher, Reinhard
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Integrated Systems Optimization Consortium at the University of Maryland . The authors also acknowledge the support of Daikin Industries Ltd., for providing geometry details and experimental data for the heat exchangers referred in the paper.
PY - 2014/4
Y1 - 2014/4
N2 - A generalized finite volume-based model to simulate Microchannel Heat Exchangers (MCHXs) with variable tube and fin geometries using a three-stream UA-AMTD method is presented in this paper. MCHXs with variable geometry can have different port dimensions, tube sizes and fin surfaces within the heat exchanger core and can have single or multiple tube banks. These novel MCHX design can further enhance the heat exchanger performance and improve its material utilization. A comprehensive literature review reveals that there is no experimental or numerical investigation of such innovative designs nor is there a modeling approach that can handle such flexible geometries. The model is validated against 227 experimental data points for eight different fluids, and eighteen MCHX geometries, including four different variable geometry microchannel condensers. This validation effort is the most comprehensive MCHX model validation presented in open literature. The average absolute capacity deviation between predicted and measured values was 2.7%.
AB - A generalized finite volume-based model to simulate Microchannel Heat Exchangers (MCHXs) with variable tube and fin geometries using a three-stream UA-AMTD method is presented in this paper. MCHXs with variable geometry can have different port dimensions, tube sizes and fin surfaces within the heat exchanger core and can have single or multiple tube banks. These novel MCHX design can further enhance the heat exchanger performance and improve its material utilization. A comprehensive literature review reveals that there is no experimental or numerical investigation of such innovative designs nor is there a modeling approach that can handle such flexible geometries. The model is validated against 227 experimental data points for eight different fluids, and eighteen MCHX geometries, including four different variable geometry microchannel condensers. This validation effort is the most comprehensive MCHX model validation presented in open literature. The average absolute capacity deviation between predicted and measured values was 2.7%.
KW - Condensers
KW - Microchannel heat exchanger
KW - Modeling
KW - Simulation
KW - Three-stream
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84894561595&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2014.01.001
DO - 10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2014.01.001
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84894561595
SN - 0140-7007
VL - 40
SP - 269
EP - 281
JO - International Journal of Refrigeration
JF - International Journal of Refrigeration
ER -