SE-14-020 -- Deluge Evaporative Cooling Performance of Wavy Fin and Tube Inclined Heat Exchangers PDF

An experimental study has been conducted to evaluate the performance of three herringbone wavy-fin round tube heat exchangers (HX) working as fluid coolers in both dry and wet conditions. The effect of fin spacing and hydrophilic coating was investigated by measuring heat transfer rate and air-side pressure drop with the HX angle set at approximately 20° from vertical, which is similar to half section of a typicalcommercial V-shaped coil. Deluge cooling increased bothHXcapacity and air-side pressure drop by a factor of up to 2.78 and 2.28 respectively. Furthermore, deluge cooling achieved 2%-30% higher capacity for HXs with fin spacing 2.4 mm (0.09 in.) compared to the coil with 3mm(0.118 in.) fin spacing. Also, a hydrophilic coated HX improves HX capacity by 5%-30%, compared to a similar coil without coating. Future studies would aim at obtaining higher capacity enhancement ratios with no increase in fan power consumption.