• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11b
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• pp.2292-2297
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• 2008

Recently, a study on condensers for refrigerators has focused on new model which will cost less and will be more efficient. Some widely used condensers for domestic refrigerators are wire-and-tube type condenser, hot-wall type condenser, and spiral type condenser. Some companies which use the spiral type condenser at the moment try to develop a new type condenser which will cost less and will be as efficient as the spiral type. The new type condenser consists of a steel tube, steel plates and louver fins attached to the tube. The tube and the plate are bent into a single-passage serpentine shape.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.710-718
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• 2010

A numerical study was performed to predict refrigerant charge amount in a mini-channel condenser for a R410A residential air-conditioning system. Multi-channel flat tubes with 12 mini-channels of 1.17 mm average hydraulic diameter for each tube were applied to the condenser. The condenser consisted of 3 passes, and the first, second, and third pass had 44, 19, and 11 tubes, respectively. Each pass was connected by a vertical header. In this study, the condenser was divided into 410 finite volumes, and analyzed by an $\varepsilon$-NTU method. With thermophysical properties and void fraction models for each volume element, the R410A amount distribution and a total charge amount in the condenser were calculated. The predicted total charge amount was compared with the experimentally measured charge amount under a standard ARI A condition. The developed model could predict the charge amount in the mini-channel condenser within prediction errors from -23.9% to -3.0%. Air velocity distribution at the condenser face was considered as non-uniform and uniform by the simulation model, and its results showed that the air velocity distribution could significantly influence the charge amount and vapor phase distribution in the condenser.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.145-152
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• 2011

The performance of flat-tube radiators with louvered fins was numerically investigated for different tube insertion lengths. The results of numerical analysis using CFX-11 were compared with experimental results. In this study, three types of flat-tube radiators with louvered fins were considered. An experiment was conducted to validate the numerical results. Flow rate ratio (FR) and Stotal were introduced to understand the uniformity of flow distribution easily. The results of numerical analysis revealed that the heat transfer rate and pressure drop increased as the mass flow rate increased. Further, the results showed that the heat transfer rate of sample 3 with h/D = 0.5 was higher than that of the other samples. The pressure drop increased as the insertion length toward the header part increased, and the pressure drop in the case of sample 3 appeared to be the highest. The factor Stotal showed that the uniformity of the flow distribution in the case of sample 1 with h/D = 0 was higher than that in the case of the other samples.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.15-20
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• 2017

Currently, residential air conditioners operate as a heat pump during winter. In this case, the outdoor heat exchanger acts as an evaporator obtaining heat from cold air. On the other hand, it acts as a condenser during summer transferring heat to hot air. The outdoor temperature changes significantly from high to low. Generally, the air-side j and f factors are obtained at a standard outdoor temperature. Therefore, the applicability of the j and f factors under different outdoor conditions needs to be checked. In this study, tests were conducted for a two-row louver finned heat exchanger changing the outdoor temperature to subzero. The effects of the tube-side brine flow rate were also checked. The results showed that air-side j and f factors were essentially constant and independent of the outdoor temperature, suggesting that an extension of j and f factors obtained under standard conditions to a low outdoor temperature is acceptable. All j and f factors agreed within 9% and 3%, respectively. Tests were also conducted by changing the coolant flow rate. Both the j and f factors did not change according to the flow rate, suggesting that the tube-side heat transfer correlation is acceptable.