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ISSN Online: 2377-424X

International Heat Transfer Conference 12
August, 18-23, 2002, Grenoble, France

The wetted area fraction of dropwise condensation with inert gases and drop drainage

Get access (open in a dialog) DOI: 10.1615/IHTC12.5450
6 pages

Résumé

A new method to determine the wetted area fraction is presented. It is based on local, instantaneous temperatures measured with infrared thermography, and on validated averaging procedures. With two independent methods, the wetted area fraction of a polymer plate condenser has been measured for gas mixtures of moist air with various concentrations of ethanol. A fraction of about 55% is found, with no systematic dependency on any inlet parameter if the inlet mass fraction of steam exceeds 0.1. The drainage of the condensate off the cooled plates, by gravity and shear, hardly or not affects the wetted area fraction. This result is interpreted with the aid of measurements of drop size distributions.