Thermal and hydraulic performance of compact brazed plate heat exchangers operating as evaporators in domestic heat pumps

Abstract: This thesis investigates the performance of compact brazed plate heat exchangers (CBE) operating as evaporator in heat pump applications. The thesis, and the performances investigated, has been divided into three main sections; One zone evaporator performance; Two zone evaporator performance; and finally Local performance.The 'One zone evaporator performance' section considers the evaporator as one "black box". It was found that "approaching terminal temperatures" were obtained as low overall heat flux is employed. It was also found that the total area averaged film heat transfer coefficient was affected by changes of the brine mass flow rate. This indicates that the widespread Wilson plot method may not be used to determine flow boiling heat transfer coefficients. Further, it seems that co- and counter-current flow configuration performs equally well if the superheat is kept low. A numerical simulation of the above investigations indicates that a nucleate boiling model better predicts the performance compared to a convective evaporation model. Finally, the significant impact of the refrigerant inlet distributor design was illustrated using several CBEs with different inlet geometries but with identical heat transfer surfaces.The 'Two zone evaporator performance section' considers the evaporator as two "black boxes", i.e. the boiling and superheating boxes. Thermochromic liquid crystals (TLC) was used to determine the boiling heat transfer area. The resulting flow boiling heat transfer coefficient was found to correlate with heat flux. The superheated heat transfer area was then estimated using single phase correlations. It was observed that the TLC measurements and the predicted superheating area did not agree. Possible causes for this deviation were discussed. The most likely explanation found was the presence of mist flow at the higher vapor quality range in the boiling section of the evaporator.The 'Local Performance' section considers local pressure drop and flow boiling heat transfer. The Chisholm parameter was found not to be a constant and was found to correlate well with the kinetic energy per volume. The resulting predictions of the pressure drop were better than ± 10%.The resulting local flow boiling heat transfer coefficient, at different vapor quality, mass flux and heat flux, was compared to flow boiling correlations available in the literature. It was found that the saturated nucleate pool boiling correlation by Cooper (1984) and narrow channel flow boiling correlations (Tran 1999, Lazarek and Black 1982) predicted the experimental data better than several traditional flow boiling correlations, developed for larger tubes.