Numerical modeling of serpentine microchannel condensers

Microchannel (or mini-channel) heat exchangers are drawing more attention because of the potential cost reduction and the lower refrigerant charge. Serpentine microchannel heat exchangers are even more compact because of the minimized headers. Using the serpentine microchannel condenser, some thermodynamically good but flammable refrigerants like R-290 (Propane) can be extended to more applications. To well size the serpentine microchannel condensers, a distributed-parameter model has been developed in this paper. Airside maldistribution is taken into account. Model validation shows good agreement with the experimental data. The predictions on the heating capacity and the pressure drop fall into ±10% error band. Further analysis shows the impact of the pass number and the airside maldistribution on the condenser performance.