Predicting and Optimizing Thermal and Hydrodynamic Performance of Parallel Flow Condensers

1999-01-0236

03/01/1999

Event
International Congress & Exposition
Authors Abstract
Content
The performance of a parallel flow condenser of a domestic vehicle was simulated by using the computer program developed earlier by the author (Mathur, 1997). None of the original correlations for predicting heat transfer, pressure drop, void fraction were changed. The working fluid used in this investigation was R-134a. The simulated performance was compared with the experimentally obtained data from the calorimeter tests. The simulated thermal and hydrodynamic performance was within ±6% of the experimental data. Detailed performance data has been presented in this paper.
The performance of the same condenser was optimized by varying the number of tubes in a given pass by fixing all other variables, e.g., tube and fin pitch; tube geometry; height, length, and depth of the condenser; number of passes; and location of the inlet and outlet connections. The investigation revealed that the performance can be improved by 4% in comparison to the base case by changing the number of tubes in the flow pass.
Meta TagsDetails
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4271/1999-01-0236
Pages
10
Citation
Mathur, G., "Predicting and Optimizing Thermal and Hydrodynamic Performance of Parallel Flow Condensers," SAE Technical Paper 1999-01-0236, 1999, https://doi.org/10.4271/1999-01-0236.
Additional Details
Publisher
Published
Mar 1, 1999
Product Code
1999-01-0236
Content Type
Technical Paper
Language
English