Condenser (heat transfer) | EPFL Graph Search

In systems involving heat transfer, a condenser is a heat exchanger used to condense a gaseous substance into a liquid state through cooling. In so doing, the latent heat is released by the substance and transferred to the surrounding environment. Condensers are used for efficient heat rejection in many industrial systems. Condensers can be made according to numerous designs, and come in many sizes ranging from rather small (hand-held) to very large (industrial-scale units used in plant processes). For example, a refrigerator uses a condenser to get rid of heat extracted from the interior of the unit to the outside air. Condensers are used in air conditioning, industrial chemical processes such as distillation, steam power plants, and other heat-exchange systems. Use of cooling water or surrounding air as the coolant is common in many condensers. History The earliest laboratory condenser, a "Gegenstromkühler" (counter-flow condenser), was invented in 1771 by the Swedish-Ger

Critical heat flux in multi-microchannel copper elements with low pressure refrigerants

Jung Eung Park

New saturated critical heat flux (CHF) data have been obtained experimentally in two different multi-microchannel heat sinks made in copper with three low pressure refrigerants (R134a, R236fa, R245fa). One of the test sections had 20 parallel rectangular channels, 467 µm wide and 4052 µm deep while the second had 29 channels, 199 µm wide and 756 µm deep. The microchannels were 30 mm long in the flow direction where a 20 mm length in the middle was heated with an electrical resistance deposited on a silicon plate. Base CHF values were measured from 37 to 342 W/cm2 for mass velocities from 100 to 4000 kg/m2s. When increasing the mass velocity, CHF was observed to increase while the rate of increase was slower at high velocities. While CHF increased moderately with large inlet subcooling (e.g. 20 K) in the H = 4052 µm channels, inlet subcooling seemed to play less a role as the channel size decreased. CHF showed reversed tendency with increasing inlet saturation temperature (10 ≤ Tsat ≤ 50°C) for the two test sections. The experimental data were compared with existing prediction methods. The data demonstrated good agreement with several predictive methods using the heated equivalent diameter Dhe and the actual mass velocity Geq to implement the circular tube correlations. Flow visualization was conducted with and without an orifice at the inlet of each microchannel. Visualization confirmed the existence of flow instability, back flow and non-uniform distribution of flow among the channels when the orifices were removed. Flow patterns in the microchannels and their evolution with increasing heat flux were observed. The flow boiling curves suggest that in the case of omitting the orifice, the boiling incipient occurred at a higher heat flux resulting in a higher overshoot of wall temperature. Moreover, the flow was easily subjected to instability and caused CHF to occur at much lower values than occurred with the orifices in place.

EPFL2008

Numerical Modeling of Annular Laminar Film Condensation in Circular and Non-Circular Micro-Channels under Normal and Micro-Gravity

Stefano Nebuloni

A theoretical and numerical model to predict film condensation heat transfer in mini, micro and ultra micro-channels of different internal shapes is presented in this thesis. The model is based on a finite volume formulation of the Navier-Stokes and energy equations and it includes the contributions of the unsteady terms, surface tension, axial shear stresses, gravitational forces and wall thermal conduction. Notably, interphase mass transfer and near-to-wall effects (disjoining pressure) are also included. This model has been validated versus various benchmark cases and versus published experimental results from three different laboratories, predicting micro-channel heat transfer data with an average error of 20 % or better. The conjugate heat transfer problem arising from the coupling between the thin film fluid dynamics, the heat transfer in the condensing fluid and the heat conduction in the channel wall has been studied and analyzed. The work has focused on the effects of three external wall boundary conditions: a uniform wall temperature, a non uniform wall heat flux and single-phase convective cooling. The thermal axial and peripheral conduction occurring in the wall of the channel can affect the behavior of the condensate film, not only because it redistributes the heat, but also because the annular laminar film condensation process is dependent on the local saturation to wall temperature difference. When moving from mini to micro and ultra-micro channels, the results shows that the axial conduction effects can become very important in the prediction of the wall temperature profile and they can not be ignored. Under these conditions, the overall performances of the heat exchanger become dependent not only on the fluid properties and the operative conditions but also on the geometry and wall material. Results obtained for steady state conditions are presented for circular, elliptical and flattened shape cross sections for R-134a and ammonia, for hydraulic diameters between 10 µm and 3 mm. Microscale condensation finds applications in heat pipes and compact heat exchangers for electronic equipment or spacecraft thermal control, in automotive condensers, in residential air conditioning and in refrigeration applications: the influence of the steady or unsteady gravitational field and of the inertia forces on the flow field and consequently on the heat transfer performances is investigated allowing the model to be applied as a design and optimization tool for enhanced heat exchangers.

EPFL2010

Cooling High Heat Flux Micro-Electronic Systems using Refrigerants in High Aspect Ratio Multi-Microchannel Evaporators

Etienne Costa-Patry

Improving the energy efficiency of cooling systems can contribute to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Currently, most microelectronic applications are air-cooled. Switching to two-phase cooling systems would decrease power consumption and allow for the reuse of the extracted heat. For this type of application, multi-microchannel evaporators are thought to be well adapted. However, such devices have not been tested for a wide range of operating conditions, such that their thermal response to the high non-uniform power map typically generated by microelectronics has not been studied. This research project aims at clarifying these gray areas by investigating the behavior of the two-phase flow of different refrigerants in silicon and copper multi-microchannel evaporators under uniform, non-uniform and transient heat fluxes operating conditions. The test elements use as a heat source a pseudo-chip able to mimic the behavior of a CPU. It is formed by 35 independent sub-heaters, each having its own temperature sensor, such that 35 temperature and 35 heat flux measurements can be made simultaneously. Careful measurements of each pressure drop component (inlet, microchannels and outlet) found in the micro-evaporators showed the importance of the inlet and outlet restriction pressure losses. The overall pressure drop levels found in the copper test section were low enough to possibly be driven by a thermosyphon system. The heat transfer coefficients measured for uniform heat flux conditions were very high and typically followed a V-shape curve. The first branch was associated to the slug flow regime and the second to the annular flow regime. By tracking the minimum level of heat transfer, a transition criteria between the regimes was established, which included the effect of heat flux on the transition. Then for each branch, a different prediction method was used to form the first flow pattern-based prediction method for two-phase heat transfer in microchannels. A non-uniform heat flux creates important temperature gradients in the evaporator, such that the data reduction procedure needs to be adapted to include heat spreading within the evaporator. To do so, a robust multi-dimensional thermal conduction scheme was developed. Once these effects were taken into consideration, the local heat transfer coefficients provided by two-phase flow were found to be the same for uniform and non-uniform heat fluxes, allowing the flow pattern-based method to be extended to non-uniform heat flux conditions. Lastly, with proper control of the mass flow, transient heat flux situations were well handled by the micro-evaporators.

EPFL2011