Experimental Study of Condensation Flow Inside Horizontal Smooth, Herringbone and Three Enhanced Surface Tubes

Enhanced condensation heat transfer of two-phase flow on the horizontal tube side receives more and more concerns for its fundamentality and importance. Experimental investigations on convective condensation were performed respectively in different horizontal tubes: (i) a smooth tube (11.43 mm, inner diameter); (ii) a herringbone tube (11.43 mm, fin root diameter); and (iii) three enhanced surface (EHT) tubes (11.5 mm, equivalent inner diameter): 1EHT tube, 2EHT-1 tube and 2EHT-2 tubes. The surface of EHT tubes is enhanced by arrays of dimples with the background of petal arrays. Experiments were conducted at a saturation temperature of approximately 320 K; 0.8 inlet quality; and 0.2 outlet quality; 72–181 kg·m⁻²·s⁻¹ mass flux using R22, R32 and R410A as the working fluid. The refrigerant R32 presents great heat transfer performance than R410A and R22 at low mass flux due to its higher latent heat of vaporization and larger thermal conductivity. The heat enhancement ratio of the herringbone tube is 2.72–2.82, rated number one. The primary dimples on the EHT tube increase turbulence and flow separation, and the secondary petal pattern produce boundary layer disruption to many smaller scale eddies. The 2EHT tubes are inferior to the 1EHT tube. A performance factor is used to evaluate the enhancement effect except of the contribution of area increase.