Long-term performance of air-side heat transfer and pressure drop for finned tube evaporators of air conditioners under intermittent operation conditions

Abstract In this study, the effects of long-term intermittent operations on the air-side heat transfer and pressure drop performance of finned tube evaporators of air conditioners were investigated by experiments on an aluminum-fin evaporator and a copper-fin evaporator. In order to simulate intermittent operations of on–off controlled air conditioners, the temperatures of the two evaporators changed to 5 ± 0.5 °C at first and then to 27 ± 0.5 °C repeatedly. The repetition number was up to 4800, and the air-side heat transfer and pressure drop of the two evaporators were tested after every 300 repetitions. The test results indicate that after long-term intermittent operations, the air-side heat transfer coefficient decreases and the pressure drop increases. The variations of the heat transfer coefficient and the pressure drop are more obvious at lower inlet air velocity, and the influence of long-term intermittent operations on the aluminum-fin evaporator is greater than that on the copper-fin evaporator.