Surprising effects of combined vapour and liquid mass transfer resistances when condensing a mixture outside tube banks
Journal article, 2005

Detailed calculations are carried out for condensation of a binary zeotropic mixture outside a tube bank to investigate combined effects of mass transfer resistances in the liquid and vapour phases. The question is how a change in mass transfer resistance in the vapour phase can influence the heat flux. The surprising result is that a decrease in resistance in the vapour phase by reducing the tube pitch, and thus increasing the vapour velocity, reduces the heat flux between 20% and 50% for the conditions studied. This is due to a combination of mass transfer resistance, depletion of the heavy volatile component, and a reduction of the phase interface temperature.

Mixture

Mass transfer resistance

Condensation

Tube bundle

Author

Tord Karlsson

Industrial Energy Systems and Technologies

Lennart Vamling

Industrial Energy Systems and Technologies

International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

0017-9310 (ISSN)

Vol. 48 2 403-412

Subject Categories

Other Environmental Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2004.06.041

More information

Created

10/7/2017