An Experimental Investigation on Refrigerant-Water Flow Distribution and Local Heat Transfer Performance in Plate Heat Exchangers

This study provides an experimental investigation on the local heat transfer performance of refrigerant-water heat transfer in a plate heat exchanger. The Infrared Thermography was used for measuring the surface temperature on the water-side plate. The local heat transfer coefficient was obtained by integrating the water flow rate and temperature difference between the adjacent points on the plate. The test results show that saturated and superheated areas can be clearly observed by the IR image. In the intersection of these two regions, a drastically water temperature decrease was observed. This is attributed to the high heat transfer coefficient of evaporation and high temperature difference between water and refrigerant and therefore high heat transfer rate.