• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.25 no.9
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• pp.1245-1252
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• 2001

The condensation pressure drop for pure refrigerants R-22, R-134a, and a binary refrigerant mixture R-410A flowing in a small diameter tube was investigated. The test section is a counterflow heat exchanger with refrigerant flowing in the inner tube and coolant flowing in the annulus. The test section consists of 1220 [mm] length with horizontal copper tube of 3.38 [mm] outer diameter and 1.77 [mm] inner diameter. The refrigerant mass fluxes ranged from 450 to 1050 [kg/(㎡$.$s)] and the average inlet and outlet qualities were 0.05 and 0.95, respectively. The main experimental results were summarized as follows : In the case of single-phase flow, the pressure drop of R-134a is much higher than that of R-22 and R-410A for the same Reynolds number. The friction factors for small diameter tubes are higher than those predicted by Blasius equation. In the case of two-phase flow, the pressure drop increases with increasing mass flux and decreasing quality. The pressure drop of R-134a is much higher than that of R-22 and R-410A for the same mass flux. Most of correlations proposed in the large diameter tube showed enormous deviations with experimental data. However, the correlation predicted by Honda et al showed relatively good agreement with experimental data for R-134.