Water vaporization inside a smooth plate-type heat exchanger at subatmospheric pressure: impact of the channel thickness.
Résumé
Using water as refrigerant requires to work at operating condition close to its triple point. At these low pressures, knowledge on heat transfer phenomena is insufficient. Thus, in order to increase experimental data available in this range of pressure, the impact of the channel thickness on the performance of a low pressure smooth plate-type evaporator is studied. Performances obtained with a channel thickness of 2 mm, 4 mm and 6 mm are compared. It is shown that although the performances might slightly increase with the increase of the channel thickness, for some operating conditions the trend is reversed. In all the experimental domain covered, the highest cooling capacity is obtained for a thickness of the channel of 2 mm.