Abstract
A new super compact condenser(SCC), which has been developed recently is especially suitable for an alternative refrigerant HFC-134a due to its high performance and compactness. The SCC is composed of two pipe headers, baffles, narrow multi-rectangular channels, and louvered fin arrays. Alternating inlet and outlet by the inserted baffles in pipe headers guide refrigerant to and from the narrow multi-rectangular channels. Since the flow rate and its lengh are changed depending on the number and location of baffles, the corresponding pressure drop and heat transfer rate are changed. The present study aims to theoretically and experimentally investigate the effects of baffle location and its number on the pressure drop and thermal performance of the SCC with 40 multi-rectangular channels. The results show that the present method provides an acceptable prediction of pressure drop and heat transfer rate for a 4 pass SCC. However, the model significantly under predicts the performance of a 3 pass SCC, which may be attributed to the phase separation of refrigerant flowing through header pipes. Pressure drop is more signifi- cantly influenced than heat transfer rate by the baffle location.
