Experimental Study on Thermal Hydraulic Characteristics of Steam Condensation in Capillary Glass Tubes

Abstract

At present, a microchannel heat exchanger is requested to achieve high efficiency in small size energy equipments. In order to clarify the heat transfer mechanism in a microchannel heat exchanger, knowledge on the thermal hydraulic characteristics of condensation flow in the channels is essential. However, study on the thermal hydraulic characteristics of condensation flow in a microchannel is hardly conducted except visualization of flow patterns. Objectives of the present study are to estimate the heat transfer performance of the present device and to observe the condensation behavior of vapor flow to clarify the thermal hydraulic characteristics of condensation flow in a capillary tube. As the results, it is confirmed that the microchannel heat exchanger realizes heat exchange of 7 kW when phase changes. In a single capillary glass tube as a simulated unit microchannel, the annular flow, the injection flow and the bubbly flow in a capillary tube are observed. According to the comparison of the present device and the glass tube experiment, it is suggested that the flow structure in the microchannel heat exchanger is almost same as that in the glass capillary tube.