Convective Boiling Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop Characteristics of R134a in a Microfinned Helically Coiled Tube

The main purpose of this paper was to experimentally study the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of refrigerant R134a boiling inside a new geometry microfin helically coiled tube. Experiments were performed in a range of mass quality from 0.05 up to 0.9, mass velocity 70 ∼ 380 kg/m²s and heat flux 2.0 ∼ 21.8 kW/m². The local and average convective boiling heat transfer coefficients were reported in this paper, which were found to be dependent on both of mass flux and heat flux. Compared with corresponding smooth helically coiled tube, the microfin helically coiled tube could enhance the convective boiling heat transfer very well. The enhancement factor was up to 2.2 with the variety of mass flux and heat flux. Heat transfer in annular flow was specially studied. A flow boiling heat transfer correlation was presented for the annular flow regime, which had a mean deviation of 9.1%. The frictional pressure drop values were obtained by subtracting acceleration pressure drop and gravitational pressure drop from the measured total pressure drop. The frictional pressure drop data can be well correlated by Lockhart-Martinelli parameter. Considering the corresponding flow regimes, i.e., stratified and annular flow, two frictional pressure drop correlations were proposed, and showed a good agreement with the respective experimental data.