Flow boiling heat transfer of ammonia/water mixture in a plate heat exchanger

The objective of this work is to contribute to the development of plate heat exchangers as desorbers for ammonia/water absorption refrigeration machines driven by waste heat or solar energy. In this study, saturated flow boiling heat transfer and the associated frictional pressure drop of ammonia/water mixture flowing in a vertical plate heat exchanger is experimentally investigated.Experimental data is presented to show the effects of heat flux between 20 and 50 kW m−2, mass flux between 70 and 140 kg m−2 s−1, mean vapour quality from 0.0 to 0.22 and pressure between 7 and 15 bar, for ammonia concentration between 0.42 and 0.62. The results show that for the selected operating conditions, the boiling heat transfer coefficient is highly dependent on the mass flux, whereas the influence of heat flux and pressure are negligible mainly at higher vapour qualities. The pressure drop increases with increasing mass flux and quality. However, the pressure drop is independent of the imposed heat flux.