Abstract

In this study, nucleate pool boiling heat transfer coefficients of alternative refrigerants on a plain, low fin, and two enhanced tubes were measured and compared against each other. To obtain data at conditions similar to the actual evaporator, a fluid heating method was employed instead of an electric heating method in the experiments. R123, R134a, R22 and R410a were used as working fluids and data were taken at 7 deg.C ar heat fluxes of 20 ~ 100 kW/m$\^$2/. Comparison of the plain tube data against some correlations showed that the simplest correlation of Cooper based on reduced pressure predicted the data for all fluids tested with a 10% deviation. For all refrigerants, enhanced tubes composed of subsurface and subtunnels, especially Thermoexcel-E tube, showed the highest heat transfer coefficients among the tubes tested with one exception that the low fin tube's performance was better than those of enhanced tubes for high vapor pressure fluid such as R410a at high heat flux. Finally, a low fin and enhanced tubes showed higher heat transfer enhancement for low vapor pressure of R123 than for high vapor pressure fluisd. For R123, the enhancement factors for Turbo-B and Thermoexcel-E tubes were 2.8 ~ 4.8 and 4.6 ~ 8.1 respectively.

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