An Overview of Recent Progress in Condensation Heat Transfer Enhancement Across Horizontal Tubes and the Tube Bundle

Abstract

The present paper presents a review of condensation heat transfer across smooth and enhanced horizontal surfaces due to its significance in refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump applications. The emphasizes is on the recent understanding of experimental as well as the semi-empirical correlations to investigate the heat transfer phenomena during condensation associated with enhanced geometries. An effort has been made to submit freeconvection condensation effects outside of single tubes and the tube bundle with the influence of tube geometries, condensate retention and gravity on film condensation; however, comparison of forced convection is also presented. Alternative of conventional refrigerants in condensation process by low-global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants is addressed as well due to increase in atmospheric burden affected by hydro-fluoro-carbons (HFCs). Although many researchers have reviewed the condensation impact across enhanced surfaces, a few of them revised its behavior across pin-fin tubes. The effects of geometry, surface wettability, and operating conditions on the location, amount and form of condensate film are discussed. Various theoretical models prediction with the new experimental data across pin-fin tubes is also revealed. This review is distributed into two main sections: the first section focuses on condensation across enhanced tubes, sub dividing the study into integral-fin and pin-fin tubes based on theoretical and experimental investigations. It covers the geometrical effects concerning three dimensional (3D) surfaces, fin density, fin spacing and fin thickness. The later part of the paper concentrates on condensation behavior across the tube bundle incorporating the effects of fin density and refrigerant mixtures highlighting both theoretical and experimental knowledge. Recent research shows an agreement between theoretical and experimental models in the defined area; though, a considerable amount of work on semi-empirical correlation formulation is visible in the literature. The strength of this paper is the latest findings on condensation against different geometrical parameters of extended surfaces specifically across pin-fin tubes and the tube bundle. Finally, theoretical enhancement factors along with many heat transfer correlations are presented and recommendations are suggested for the future work.