Pressure Drop During Refrigerant Condensation Inside Horizontal Smooth, Helical Micro-Fin, and Herringbone Micro-Fin Tubes

Published

October 6, 2004

Author(s)

J A. Olivier, L Liebenberg, Mark A. Kedzierski, J P. Meyer

Abstract

This paper presents a study of pressure drops during condensation inside a smooth, an 18 helical micro-fin, and a herringbone micro-fin tube. Measurements were conducted with refrigerant flowing through the inner tube (inner diameter of 8 to 9 mm) and water in a counter flow direction in the annulus. Each tube was part of a condenser consisting of eight sub-condensers with sensitive instrumentation preceding each. Three refrigerants were used, namely R-22, R-134a, and R-407C, all operating at a saturation temperature of 40 C at mass fluxes ranging from 300 to 800 kg/m 2 s. Inlet qualities ranged from 0.85-0.95 and outlet qualities ranged from 0.05-0.15. The test results showed that on average for the three refrigerants the pressure drops of the herringbone micro-fin tube were about 5% higher than that of the helical micro-fin tube, and about 100% higher than that of the smooth tube. Well known correlations for pressure drops were used to compare the data inside the three different tubes. The correlations used for the herringbone micro-fin tube predicted the data by 51%. A correlation developed for the helical micro-fin tube was modified for the herringbone micro-fin tube and predicted the data by 6.2%

Citation

University of Pretoria, South Africa

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

condensation, herringbone-fins, horizontal tubes, micro-fins, refrigerants

Citation

Olivier, J. , Liebenberg, L. , Kedzierski, M. and Meyer, J. (2004), Pressure Drop During Refrigerant Condensation Inside Horizontal Smooth, Helical Micro-Fin, and Herringbone Micro-Fin Tubes, University of Pretoria, South Africa, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=860928 (Accessed October 13, 2025)