Investigation On Simulation Model And Refrigerant Flow Distribution Of Parallel Flow Condenser

With the high performance, less refrigerant charge and totally aluminum rather thancopper, parallel flow condenser attracts extensive attention, meanwhile its heat transferperformance is prevented seriously because of its manifold brand structure. So it is importantto investigate simulated mode and refrigerant flow distribution of parallel flow condenser.The present research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation, IndependentInnovation Foundation in Huazhong University of Science and Technology and thecooperation project in industry, education and research of Guangdong province and Ministryof Education of P. R. China.A steady state distribution parameter model of parallel flow condenser was build basedon finite volume method and ε-NTU mode, the mode included superheat module, two-phasemodule and subcooled module and each module contained air side submodel and refrigerantside submodel. Two groups of heat transfer and flow modes of two-phase refrigerant ofmicrochannels and air of louvered fins were chosen to build4simulated modes of parallelflow condenser. An air conditioner prototype with4-pass parallel flow condenser was buildand studied experimentally under6different working conditions. It was found that only onesimulated mode that based on Kim’s louvered fins and modified microchannel two-phaseheat transfer and flow mode could agree with experiment under all the6working conditions.The flow distribution between multiple parallel tubes and headers is typicallynon-uniform especially the fluid is phase-changed. The flow distribution of single-phasefluid in parallel flow condenser has been resolved by fluid network theory. With regard toflow distribution of two-phase fluid in branch manifold, this paper employed the pressuredrop mode previous proposed based on two-phase flow regime, T-junction mode that dividedbrand manifold into brands, headers and T-junction joined them and built distribution modeof two-phase flow in manifold by finite-volume mode. It was found that the simulationresults were mainly agreement with the experimental results of Lee et al.