Experimental validation of model predictions on evaporator coils with an emphasis on fin efficiency

Simultaneous heat and mass transfers occur when an evaporator coil works in a wet condition due to the condensation of moist air. In evaporator modeling, overall fin efficiency is commonly used in heat balance and mass conservation equations to calculate sensible and latent heat transfers. In this paper, to analyze the simultaneous heat and mass transfer on the evaporator coils, a new concept, i.e. sensible and latent fin efficiencies, is introduced. The result shows that the latent fin efficiency is generally not equal to the sensible or the overall fin efficiencies. The proposed 1-D wet fin efficiency model has been validated by the extensive comparison of the model predictions against the experimental data on evaporator coils with various configurations that include simple and complex refrigerant circuitry.