Experimental Evaluation of Thermal Performance of A New Multi-segmented Minichannel-based Radiant Ceiling Cooling Panel

In this paper, a new multi-segmented minichannel heat exchanger based radiant ceiling panel (M-RCP) is proposed. Experiments to evaluate M-RCPs’ performance with different tilt angles were conducted. The result showed that the M-RCPs had an advantage compared to the conventional RCP from the viewpoint of cooling output per panel area and temperature difference. In addition, by providing the forced convection with fans, the cooling output from the M-RCP increased 3.6 times compared to that from the M-RCP without the forced convection. Furthermore, 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models of M-RCPs were produced and the CFD models were validated by comparing with the experimental results. The result of comparisons indicated that the CFD models can predict the cooling output with high accuracy.