Abstract
In the present work, investigation on flow boiling heat transfer of R-134a inside a horizontal tube and also the tubes with coiled wire inserts has been done experimentally. The experimental setup which was used in this investigation was a well instrumented vapor compression refrigeration system. This set-up consists a test evaporator which all the experiments were carried out on it. Refrigerant which flows inside the tube of test evaporator is electrically heated by the coils around it. The evaporator tube is a copper tube with 7.5 mm internal diameter. The range of some operating parameters are: refrigerant mass velocities 54-136 kg/m2s, vapor qualities 0.2-1.0 and heat fluxes 2-6 kW/m2. The empirical data were collected for plain tube and tubes with seven different coiled wire inserts (different coil pitches and different wire diameters). The results show that the insertion of a helically coiled wire inside the evaporator tube increases the heat transfer coefficient by as much as 83% above the plain tube values on a nominal area basis. An empirical correlation was developed to predict the heat transfer coefficient during flow boiling of R-134a inside horizontal coiled wire inserted tubes.