Investigation of phase change characteristics for refrigerant R-134a flow in a double pipe heat exchanger with the use of thermal non-equilibrium model

Lmost all thermal systems utilize some type of heat exchanger. In a lot of cases, evaporators are important for systems like organic Rankine cycle systems. Evaporators give a share in a large portion of the capital cost, and their cost is significantly attached to their size or transfer area. Open-cell metal foams with high porosity are taken into consideration to enhance thermal performance without increase the size of heat exchangers. Numerous researchers have tried to find a representation of the temperature distribution closer to reality due to the different properties between the liquid and solid phases. Evaporation heat transfer in an annular pipe of double pipe heat exchanger (DPHEX) filled with cooper foam is investigated numerically with utilizing the local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE) model. Warm water with constant inlet conditions flows in the inner pipe while R143a is used as cooling fluid in the annular pipe. The effects of pores per inch (PPI), mass flux of R134a and copper foam porosity on solid and fluid temperatures, liquid saturation and heat transfer coefficient are analysed and illustrated. Forchheimer-extended Darcy flow model is utilized with the adopting of the two-phase mixture model (TPMM). The governing equations in two-dimensional steady state regime were written in LTNE model. These equations were discretized using the finite volume method and a MATLAB program was built to solve these equations with its initial and boundary conditions. The obtained data illustrates that LTNE effect in metal foam is important for lower porosity, lower pore density and higher mass flux. The ratio of liquid will arrive its lowest value at the outlet, and it decreases with PPI increase and it increases with porosity and mass flux increase. The mean heat transfer coefficient approximately doubled when PPI increased from 10 to 50 and it increased by 70% when porosity decreased from 0.95 to 0.85.