A Experimental Study of Condensation Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop in a Single High Aspect Ratio Micro-Channel for Refrigerant R134a

Abstract

Only recently, experimental data is available in open literature in condensation of various refrigerants in small hydraulic diameter microchannels. The phenomenon of two-phase flow and heat transfer mechanism in small diameter microchannels (< 1 mm) may be different than that in conventional tube sizes due to increasing dominance of several influencing parameters like surface tension, viscosity etc. This paper presents an on-going experimental study of condensation heat transfer and pressure drop of refrigerant R134a is a single high aspect ratio rectangular microchannel of hydraulic diameter 0.7 mm and aspect ratio 7:1. This data will help explore the condensation phenomenon in microchannels that is necessary in the design and development of small-scale heat exchangers and other compact cooling systems. The inlet vapor qualities between 20% and 80% and mass fluxes of 130 and 200 kg/m2s have been studied at present. The microchannel outlet conditions are maintained at close to thermodynamic saturated liquid state through a careful experimental procedure. A unique process for fabrication of the microchannel involving milling and electroplating steps has been adopted to maintain the channel geometry close to design values. Measurement instruments are well-calibrated to ensure low system energy balance error, uncertainty and good repeatability of test data. The trends of data recorded are comparable to that found in recent literature on similar dimension tubes.