Effects of pipe turns on vertical helically coiled tube heat exchangers for water heating in a household refrigerator

Abstract

AbstractA new coupled numerical model of the overall vapor-compression cycle and water heater was developed in order to analyze the influence of condenser coil designs on the heat transfer process of a helical coil heat exchanger immersed in a storage tank. The model was developed using the CFD code ANSYS Fluent. In the numerical simulation, the helical condenser coil was treated as an internal heat source and the initial heat flux was obtained from experimental results and delivered to each coil element in the CFD model as boundary condition.The coupled model was validated with experimental results and showed that the numerical results of the proposed model are in good agreement with the experimental data with the deviation of ± 1.6%. Then, the impact of the main representative geometrical parameter on the overall heat transfer coefficient and water temperature distribution was investigated. The results indicated that the temperature distribution and overall heat transfer coefficient increase with the increase of the pipe turns of a helically coiled tube heat exchanger.