Heat transfer enhancement of spray cooling on flat aluminum tube heat exchanger

This study provides an experimental analysis on the heat transfer performance of a flat aluminum tube microchannel heat exchanger with spray cooling. The effects of water spraying rate, airflow rate, and relative humidity were investigated. The test results show that the heat transfer performance increased with increasing the water spraying rate but without the penalty of increased flow resistance at low spray conditions. This effect is further enhanced by increasing the water spraying rate. However, when the spraying rate is high, part of the nonevaporated drops attached to the fin surface and formed a liquid film, which caused the flow passage to become narrower. Further increase in the spraying rate resulted in part of the flow passages being blocked by the nonevaporated water drops and caused a region of poor heat transfer. The friction coefficient jumped drastically at this condition. This phenomenon deceased gradually with increasing airflow rate. High inlet air humidity resulted in the water accumulation phenomenon appearing at lower water spraying rates. The evaporative cooling effect decreased and flow friction increased. The test results just described show that the water spray is able to significantly improve the air-side heat transfer performance. The optimum spray rate for each airflow rate must be carefully determined.