Study on the effect of refrigerant distributing nonuniformity on the performance of falling-film evaporator with liquid recirculation system

To investigate the effect of liquid distributing nonuniformity on the heat transfer of horizontal-tube falling film, a horizontal-tube falling-film air-cooled water chiller with an ejector liquid recirculation system (LRS) is presented, and then the finite difference model of the horizontal-tube falling-film evaporator is given. Also a new method of dividing the liquid refrigerant distributor into several subzones is proposed as well as the model of liquid refrigerant distributing nonuniformity is established. The analysis results show that increasing the liquid spraying flowrate in a certain range is obviously valid for enhancing the evaporator capacity, and the suitable Rl is about 1.2, the corresponding value of φ is about 0.85. The analysis results also suggest that the higher the liquid recirculating ratio, the more the turning point of nonuniformity coefficient, and the turning point of nonuniformity coefficient is 0.1483 when the liquid recirculating ratio is equal to 1.21. The performance of falling-film heat transfer is more sensitive to the number of subzones under the condition of higher nonuniformity coefficient, and a suggested optimal number of partitioned subzones is 4.