An experimental observation of the effect of flow direction for evaporation heat transfer in plate heat exchanger

This study provides an Infrared Thermal Image observation on the evaporation heat transfer of refrigerant R-410A in plate heat exchanger with various flow arrangement and exit superheat conditions. An experimental method was derived for estimating the superheat region area of two-phase refrigerant evaporation in plate heat exchanger. The experimental results show that the superheat region area for parallel flow is much larger than that for counter flow as that estimated by Yang et al. [9]. There is an early superheated region at the central part of the plate heat exchanger for parallel flow arrangement. This effect is not significant for counter flow arrangement. The Yang et al. [9] method under estimated the superheat area approximately 40%–53% at various flow rates and degree of exit superheat. Even though the flow inside a plate heat exchanger is extremely turbulent because of the chevron flow passages, the assumption of uniform temperature distribution in the cross section normal to the bulk flow direction will cause significant uncertainties for estimating the superheat area for refrigerant evaporating in a plate heat exchanger.