Experimental investigation on condensation heat transfer and pressure drop of a low GWP refrigerant R-1233zd(E) in a plate heat exchanger

In this study, condensation heat transfer performance and frictional pressure drop in plate heat exchanger using a low GWP refrigerant R-1233zd(E) as a working fluid are experimentally analyzed. Experiments on single phase water-to-water are also conducted in the tested plate heat exchanger, and the heat transfer coefficient correlation of the cooling water side is derived by applying the modified Wilson plot technique. In the refrigerant-to-water experiments, the influences of heat flux, refrigerant mass flux, and saturation pressure on the heat transfer and pressure drop in the tested plate heat exchanger are analyzed with varying the mean vapor quality. Experimental results show that the heat transfer coefficient increases with increasing the heat flux, mean vapor quality, and the mass flux while it decreases with increasing the saturation pressure. On the other hand, the frictional pressure drop increases with increasing the mass flux and mean vapor quality while it decreases with increasing the saturation pressure. Experimental correlations for predicting Nusselt number and friction factor of R-1233zd(E) in plate heat exchanger are developed and compared against other correlations from literature.