Heat transfer during condensation of a Low-GWP refrigerant on an enhanced cylindrical surface

In this work, heat transfer coefficients during condensation of an environment-friendly refrigerant R-1233zd(e) on the outside surface of two cylindrical tubes are individually measured. The cooling water flows inside the tubes and provides cooling to the vapor refrigerant. One tube is a plain smooth tube (smooth both inside and outside) while the other tube is an enhanced tube, with the inside surface having 2D helical ridges and the outside surface having 3D extruded fins. The tests were conducted at the saturation temperature 36.1C, a typical temperature in chiller condensers. The results show the overall heat transfer coefficients of the enhanced tube are approximately 8.4 times higher as a result of the heat transfer enhancement on both sides. The condensation heat transfer degrades with an increase in the degree of subcooling, and the trend of degradation is the nearly the same for both the smooth and the enhanced tube, both is smaller than that in the Nusselt correlation. Compared with condensation on the smooth surface, the condensation heat transfer from the enhanced surface is enhanced approximately 10.8 times higher than that on the smooth surface. In addition to enlarged heat transfer area of the extruded fins, the enhancement in the condensation heat transfer is partly attributed to a better condensate draining mechanism of the 3D-structured fins where surface tension plays an important role. Further analysis reveals that heat transfer during the condensation process on the 3D low-fin surface follows the Nusselt correlation with a multiplier that accounts for the enhancement in heat transfer, which is desirably simple approach to modeling condensation heat transfer on the complex 3D enhanced surfaces. This work can lead to more insights into the physical mechanisms during the complex condensation process.