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Concept
Condenser (heat transfer)
Summary
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.
The earliest laboratory condenser, a "Gegenstromkühler" (counter-flow condenser), was invented in 1771 by the Swedish-German chemist Christian Weigel. By the mid-19th century, German chemist Justus von Liebig would provide his own improvements on the preceding designs of Weigel and Johann Friedrich August Göttling, with the device becoming known as the Liebig condenser.
A condenser is designed to transfer heat from a working fluid (e.g. water in a steam power plant) to a secondary fluid or the surrounding air. The condenser relies on the efficient heat transfer that occurs during phase changes, in this case during the condensation of a vapor into a liquid. The vapor typically enters the condenser at a temperature above that of the secondary fluid. As the vapor cools, it reaches the saturation temperature, condenses into liquid and releases large quantities of latent heat. As this process occurs along the condenser, the quantity of vapor decreases and the quantity of liquid increases; at the outlet of the condenser, only liquid remains. Some condenser designs contain an additional length to subcool this condensed liquid below the saturation temperature.
Official source
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