Research on Air-Side Performance of Automobile Air-Conditioning Parallel Flow Condenser

The authors conduct the experimental study andsimulation for the automobile air conditioning parallel flow condenser, especially study the properties of heat transfer and flow at the side of air when using louver fin. This model used a finite volume method to predict the condenser performance. The properties of air and refrigerant at outlet of each element were determined by the effectiveness-NTU method for a cross-flow condenser. The model was solved by EES which uses the Martin and Hou equation of state to calculate R134a thermodynamic properties. The comparison of experimental data with calculation result shows that the errors are within 5%. The discussion is focused on the influences of different velocity of air and fin's geometry parameters on the parallel condenser. References of the optimum design of the automobile air- conditioning parallel flow condenser are presented.