Numerical analysis of evaporation performance in a finned-tube heat exchanger

This study discusses the effects of the heat exchanger type, refrigerant, inner tube configuration, and fin geometry on evaporator performance by adopting updated correlations of EVSIM, a numerical analysis model based on the tube-by-tube method developed by Domanski. The heat exchanger types considered are the cross-counter flow type and cross-parallel flow type. The refrigerants considered for the numerical test as a working fluid are R-134a, R-410A and R-22. For inner tube configuration, enhanced tube and smooth tube cases are considered. For the air side evaporation performance, heat exchangers using plate fins, wavy fins and slit fins are analyzed. Results show that the heat transfer rate of the cross-counter flow type heat exchanger is 3% higher than that of the cross-parallel flow type with R-22. The total heat transfer rate of the evaporator using R-410A is higher than those using R-22 and R-134a, while the total pressure drop of R-410A is lower than those of R-22 and R-134a. The heat transfer rate of the evaporator using enhanced tubes is two times higher than that using smooth tubes, but the pressure drop of the enhanced tube is 45–50% higher than that of the smooth tubes. The evaporation performance of slit fins is superior to that of plate fins by 54%.