Condensation of Water Vapor from Humid Air Inside Vertical Channels Formed by Flat Plates

Condensation of humid air is a very important process in thermal and process engineering, as well as in several industrial applications. It is also a subject of many currently research-intensive scientific domains, such as atmospheric water harvesting and seawater desalination. The nature of (water) vapor condensation in the presence of non-condensable gas (NCG) such as air differs significantly from the case with the pure, quiescent vapor condensation. In the literature, simple models that describe the condensation of the forced flow of water vapor in the presence of air on a series of vertical flat plates forming vertical channels are hard to find. Here we present a simple and computationally efficient semi-empirical correlation that describes the condensation of the forced flow of humid air on a condenser geometry consisting of a series of vertical flat plates forming vertical channels. The correlation accounts air as a non-condensing gas, different heights of vertical plates and different thermal-hydraulic parameters. The correlation has been experimentally validated and shows excellent agreement, as 90% of theoretically predicted values are within ±12% of experimental data.