Evaluation of Existing Frictional Pressure Drop Correlations During Condensation of R410A in Four Horizontal Tubes

Abstract

Results are presented here from an experimental investigation on tube side condensation characteristics that took place in four tested tubes — 1EHT-1, 1EHT-2, 4LB and a smooth tube. The equivalent outer diameter of the tubes was 9.52 mm and the inner diameter was 8.32 mm. Condensation tests were conducted using refrigerant R410A at a saturation temperature of 318K, over a mass flow range of 150–450 kgm−2s−1, with inlet and outlet vapor quality of 0.8 and 0.2, respectively. Pressure drop data of the four tested tubes were collected to evaluate five identified prediction correlations based on the separated flow model and the homogeneous flow model. For 1EHT-2 and the smooth tube, all the listed correlations manage to present predictions with the Mean Absolute Relative Deviation (MARD) less than 30%, while they underestimate the frictional pressure drop of the 4LB tube with MARD exceeding 40% averagely. Regarding the experimental data, it is found that the Muller-Steinhagen and Heck correlation presents the most accurate and stable prediction for the 4 tested tubes. The listed homogeneous flow correlations can provide acceptable predictions with MARD ranging from 25% to 40% under a few conditions, but their average predictive accuracies are inferior to that of the separated flow correlations. Consequently, the separated flow approach performs better than the homogeneous flow model in the prediction of frictional pressure drop for our experimental data.