Experimental Study on Condensation of Water Vapor in the Presence of High Concentration Non-Condensable Gas in Laminar Flow in a Vertical Channel

ABSTRACT

An experimental study is presented for the problem of laminar film condensation of a vapor from vapor-gas mixture in laminar flow in a vertical parallel plate channel. The flowing gas-vapor mixture contains a non-condensable gas in high concentration. An example of this case is the flow of humid air, in which air is present in high concentration. Vapor condenses at the dew point temperature corresponding to mass fraction of vapor in the gas-vapor mixture and the total pressure. The rate of condensation is controlled by the diffusion of the vapor through the non-condensable gas. The test rig is instrumented to obtain all data necessary to estimate the end condensate Reynolds number and average condensation heat transfer coefficient, and to measure gas-vapor mixture temperature along the length of the channel. The condensation Reynolds numbers at the exit of the channel and average condensation heat transfer coefficient estimated from the experimental data are compared with the results obtained from theoretical model of Dharma Rao et al.. The experimentally measured local temperatures of the gas-vapor mixture are compared with the theoretical results obtained for identical values of system parameters. The agreement between the experimental and theoretical results is found to be good.

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