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Airside performances of finned eight-tube heat exchangers

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Abstract

For applications in the relatively low temperature refrigeration systems with large constant temperature bath, the present work performed the experimental studies on the airside performances of the staggered finned eight-tube heat exchangers with large fin pitches. The airside heat transfer coefficients and pressure drops for three fin types and two fin pitches are obtained and analyzed. The heat transfer enhancement with louver fins is 11–16 % higher than the flat fins and that with sinusoidal corrugated fins is 1.1–3.4 % higher than the flat fins. Higher Re brings larger enhancement for various fins. Fin pitches show weak influence on heat transfer for eight tube rows. However, effects of fin pitch on heat transfer for both the sinusoidal corrugation and the louvered fin are larger than the flat fins and they are different from those for N ≤ 6. Airside Colburn j factor are compared with previous and it could be concluded that the airside j factor is almost constant for finned tube heat exchangers with eight tubes and large fin pitches, when Re is from 250 to 2500. The results are different from previous studies for fewer tube rows.

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Abbreviations

a :

Constant

A:

Heat transfer area (m2)

b :

Constant

c :

Coolant specific heat (kJ/kg K)

d :

Air humidity (kg/kgair)

h :

Air specific enthalpy (kJ/kg dry air)

h R :

Coolant HTC (W/m2 K)

h a :

Airside heat transfer coefficient (W/m2 K)

j :

Heat transfer Colburn j factor

N :

Number of tube rows

Nu R :

Tube-side Nusselt number

Q :

Averaged heat rate (W)

Q a :

Airside heat rate (W)

Q R :

Coolant side heat rate (W)

V R :

Coolant side volume flow rate (m3/h)

R :

Relative humidity (–)

Re :

Airside Reynolds number

Re R :

Tube-side Reynolds number

Pr R :

Prandtl number at coolant mean temperature (–)

Pr R :

Prandtl number at coolant tube-wall temperature (–)

p :

Airside pressure drop (Pa)

t :

Temperature (°C)

u :

Air inlet average velocity (m/s)

δ :

Tube thickness (m)

Δ:

Difference

η :

Overall fin surface efficiency (–)

λ :

Tube thermal conductivity (W/m K)

ξ:

A factor used in Gnielinski correlation

a:

Air

in:

Airside

out:

Tube-side

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by projects of the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2011CB706900) and the National Natural Science Fund for Creative Research Groups of China (No. 51321002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Thermal Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Cheng Li & Junming Li

  2. State Nuclear Power Technology Research & Development Center, Beijing, 102209, China

    Cheng Li

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  1. Cheng Li
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  2. Junming Li
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Correspondence to Cheng Li.

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Li, C., Li, J. Airside performances of finned eight-tube heat exchangers. Heat Mass Transfer 52, 2507–2513 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-016-1765-x

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