Design of Air-cooled Microchannel Condensers for Mal-distributed Air Flow Conditions

Air-cooled condensers are routinely designed for a variety of applications, including residential air-conditioning systems. Recent attempts at improving the performance of these heat exchangers have included the consideration of microchannel tube, multilouver fin heat exchangers instead of the more conventional round tube-plate fin designs. In most packaged air-conditioning systems, however, the condenser surrounds the compressor and other auxiliary parts in an outdoor unit, with an induced draft fan at the top of this enclosure. Such a configuration results in significant mal-distribution of the air flow arriving at the condenser, and leads to a decrease in performance. This work addresses the issue of mal-distribution by adapting the air-side geometry to the expected air flow distribution. A microchannel tube, multilouver fin condenser is first designed to transfer the desired heat rejection load for an air-conditioning system under uniform air flow conditions. Tube-side pass arrangements, tube dimensions, and fin and louver geometry are varied to arrive at a minimum mass, 2.54 kg condenser that delivers the desired heat load of 14.5 kW. The design model is then used to predict the performance of the condenser for a variety of air flow distributions across the heat exchanger. It is found that for a 50% air flow mal-distribution, the required condenser mass increases to 2.73 kg. The air-side geometry (fin density and height) of the condenser is then systematically changed to optimally distribute the air-side surface area across the condenser to best address the mal-distributed air flow. It is found that linear fin density and height variations from the mean value of 40% and 20%, respectively, keeping the mean fin density and height the same, reduce the required condenser mass to 2.65 kg even for this mal-distributed air-flow case. The influence of geometry variations on heat transfer coefficients, fan power and other performance measures is discussed in detail to guide the judicious choice of surface area and tube-side flow area allocations for any potential air flow mal-distribution. The results from this study can be used for the design of air-cooled condensers under realistic flow conditions.M.S.Committee Chair: Garimella, Srinivas; Committee Member: Jeter, Sheldon; Committee Member: Joshi, Yogendr