EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH AND DESIGN ON HEAT TRANSFER OF EVAPORATOR USED IN THE LARGE QUICK FREEZE PLANT

The evaporator is the main part of a quick-freeze equipment. There are many factors influencing the heat transfer coefficient of an evaporator. The most important factors among them are the fin shape, tube diameter, distance of fin space, frost, and velocity of air flow etc. They mainly influence the thermal efficiency of an evaporator, and therefore its thermal efficiency has direct relationship with the whole efficiency of the quick freeze plant. Evaporators with different structural types have different heat transfer efficiency. In order to obtain high efficiency structure of evaporator, 8 evaporator models with different fin shape, tube diameter and tube arrangement are analyzed and compared. The calculation results show that the integral waved fins, equilateral-triangle arranged small diameter tubes and varying fin-spacing has the highest heat transfer coefficient. The experimental result also shows that the evaporator with this type of structure has better thermal efficiency. The experimental result is in good agreement with the calculation result. It can instruct engineering design for usual designer. A real quick-freeze equipment is designed and put into production. The result shows that, compared with traditional domestic quick-freeze equipments, this equipment decreases by 40% in size and by 20% in energy consumption.