The heat transfer performance of horizontal tube bundles in large falling film evaporators

The performance of the horizontal heat transfer tube bundles in falling film evaporators in large compression refrigeration systems was investigated with numerical simulation in this paper. Four types of tubes, including plain tubes, and enhanced surface tubes of Turbo-B, Turbo-BII and Turbo-EHP, were employed in the simulation. Some factors, such as tube kind, tube pass arrangement, dry patch area on tube surface, liquid refrigerant flow rate, and number of flooded tubes, were analyzed based on simulated results. In the study, the maldistribution of liquid refrigerant flow caused by the distributor apparatus was discussed, which severely affects the performance of falling film evaporators according to the simulation. Some calculated results were verified by the experiment. These discussions and results can be used to guide the design of falling film evaporators under realistic flow conditions.