Frosting in a heat pump evaporator part B: Numerical analysis

This paper is presenting the numerical investigation of the frosting behaviour of a heat pump evaporator in its full complexity, imitating the real-life operation of the experimental setup described in Part A of this publication. The backbone of this work represents the simulation framework for the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied thermal engineering 2021-11, Vol.199, p.117488, Article 117488
Main Authors: Popovac, M., Emhofer, J., Reichl, Ch
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
CFD
Computational fluid dynamics
Evaporation
Evaporators
Fin and tube heat exchanger
Flow distribution
Frost mass and growth
Heat and mass transfer
Heat exchangers
Heat pumps
Heat transfer
Mathematical models
Numerical analysis
OpenFoam
Pumps
Wall temperature
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Summary:This paper is presenting the numerical investigation of the frosting behaviour of a heat pump evaporator in its full complexity, imitating the real-life operation of the experimental setup described in Part A of this publication. The backbone of this work represents the simulation framework for the selected algebraic frost growth model, with the novelty focused on its implementation into a 3D unstructured finite volume general purpose CFD code. The obtained frosting predictions, encompassing the frost growth and the related frost mass increase (responding through the model to the imposed evaporator wall temperature and ambient conditions) interlaced with the resulting change of the flow pattern, are achieving an average agreement within 10% in comparison to the experimental results. The presented modelling framework is applied to the geometrical entirety of the fin and tube evaporator of an air-source heat pump operating under experimentally monitored frosting conditions, and compared with the corresponding frosting results of the evaporator symmetric section, in order to provide the scaling correlation between the frosting characteristics of the full model and the extracted part. •OpenFoam implementation of algebraic frosting model for real-life frosting simulation.•Frosting modelling applied to experimentally investigated heat pump evaporator.•Frosting quantities scaling between complex evaporator and simplified extraction.•Methodology to characterize frosting in complex geometries by numerical simulation.
ISSN:1359-4311
1873-5606
DOI:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2021.117488