Study on Development of High Performance Evaporator for Automotive Air Conditioner

자동차 공조용 증발기의 고성능화에 관한 연구

The object of the present study is to develop a high performance evaporator for automotive air conditioner. The experiment has been conducted on evaporative heat transfer coefficient inside a plate type heat exchanger with a sharp 180-degree turn flow. The test plates have different formed surface, cross-ribbed channel and elliptical-ribbed channel. Also experimental study has been performed to determine optimal design in elliptical-ribbed plate heat exchanger with different turn clearance. In addition to the above experiments, refrigerant behavior and surface temperature distribution in the plate heat exchanger were observed using color thermoviewer(infrared thermometer). In this experiment, working fluid was used R-12 and test conditions were as follows : (1) saturation pressure of $2.116kg/cm^2$, (2) mass fluxes of 40 to $70kg/m^2s$, (3) heat fluxes of 4,500 to $7,300W/m^2$, (4) inlet quality of 0.1 to 0.7. The results indicated that the evaporative heat transfer coefficient of an elliptical-ribbed plate heat exchanger was higher than that of cross-ribbed plate heat exchanger. Also optimal turn clearance in an elliptical-ribbed plate heat exchanger was determined.