Experimental study on the performance of a novel fin-tube air heat exchanger with punched longitudinal vortex generator

To enhance the heat transfer of fin-tube surface, two kinds of novel fin-tube surfaces with two rows of tubes in different diameter, arranged in staggered pattern are presented. Along the direction of air flow, the diameter of the first transverse row of tubes is smaller than that of the second. Delta winglet pairs working as longitudinal vortex generators are punched only around the first transverse row of tubes in reduced size, with either “common flow up” or “common flow down” orientation. The performances of two new types of air heat exchangers using the novel fin-tube surfaces (referred as SA and SB) and one traditional plain fin-tube heat exchanger (named BL) acting as baseline in contract are experimentally studied under dry-surface conditions. On the condition of the minimum cross velocity in heat exchanger umax = 4.0 m/s, air-side convective heat transfer coefficients of SA and SB increases by 16.5% and 28.2%, respectively, in comparison with that of BL. The air-side pressure drop decreases less than 10% for SA, and slightly decreases for SB, compared with the baseline heat exchanger. The present results show that one can achieve heat transfer enhancement accompanying with a reduction of pressure loss using the strategies of fin-tube surface, longitudinal vortex generator design and appropriate placement on the fin-tube surfaces.

► Two novel fin-tube heat exchangers with delta winglet pairs are experimentally studied.
► Heat transfer enhancement accompanying with a reduction of pressure loss is achieved.
► Optimization of the location, orientation and size of delta winglet should be done for practical use.