Open Access EPE Condensation Heat Transfer in Horizontal Non-Circular

Copyright © 2013 Hicham El Mghari et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Li-cense, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This investigation contributes to a better understanding of condensation heat transfer in horizontal non-circular micro-channels. For this purpose, the conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy have been numerically solved in both phases (liquid and vapor), and all the more so the film thickness analytical expression has been established. Nu-merical results relative to variations of the meniscus curvature radius, the condensate film thickness, the condensation length and heat transfer coefficients, are analyzed in terms of the influencing physical and geometrical quantities. The effect of the microchannel shapes on the average Nusselt number is highlighted by studying condensation of steam in-square, rectangular and equilateral triangular microchannels with the same hydraulic diameter of 250 µm