Finned coils are no adays the most widespread kind of air-cooled condensers in air-conditioning and heat pump applications. A simulation model was developed for this type of heat exchanger and applied for comparison ith R-22 as the refrigerant and its HFC main candidate substitutes. This simulation is finalized to find the optimal design of the internal circuits of the heat exchanger for each refrigerant and thus leads to the comparison among fin coils orking ith different refrigerants. The comparisons developed here are performed at equal heat transfer area and heat flow rate,considering a condenser of fixed size. The result of this comparison is expressed in terms of the saturation temperature at the inlet of the condenser, which directly affects the compression power. The present analysis discusses the advantages in condensation heat transfer of using high-pressure fluids,such as R-410A and R-32.

Units: SI