Air-cooled condensing systems for home and industrial appliances

In most instances air-cooled condensers for home and industrial appliances are suitably drained cross-flow exchangers in which a cooling-air stream is utilised to reduce the moisture content of the process-air stream. In this paper we illustrate a procedure to calculate the wet effectiveness of these exchangers, based on an original adaptation of the effectiveness vs. number of transfer units method developed for dry exchangers. Calculated results are validated successfully by employing the experimental results obtained in a dedicated test facility. The model proposed is thus proved accurate and reliable, both for comparing the performances of different condensers and for analysing the influence of design parameters.