The fin-and-tube heat exchanger is probably the most common piece of equipment found in

any air-conditioning installation. These heat exchangers are typically referred to as coils
and are designated by the fluids in the tube. So, a chilled water coil is a fin-and-tube heat
exchanger used for cooling air where the coolant is chilled water and the direct expansion
coil is a fin-and-tube evaporator found in a vapour compression cycle.
These two coil types are primarily used to cool air. In most cases, the temperature of the
coolant at the coil inlet is in the order of 6 C and at typical air-conditioning temperatures,
this would result in a coil surface temperature that is below the dew point of the air being
cooled. The consequence of this is that there will be condensation on the coil surface and
this condensate is clearly evident by the water flowing out of the drain pans of many
installations.
Methods to design and select heating coils are based on an overall heat transfer coefficient
multiplied by the appropriate temperature difference. In cooling coils where there is
condensation, the temperature difference is not the correct driving force since the latent
heat of condensation is not accounted for.
There have been different ways of dealing with this shortfall. These include the introduction
of a sensible heat factor to modify the outside film coefficient, use of a log mean enthalpy
difference and the effectiveness method based on a saturation specific heat. In this paper,
we develop the equations and by simulation, illustrate the validity of the effectiveness
method for solving wet surface cooling coils.

The conventional LMTD method
The LMTD method is a well-known way of calculating a heat exchanger size. The idea is that
the heat exchanger has a pre-defined heat transfer coefficient and that the driving force for
heat flow is the temperature difference.
Q = U
o
A
o
dt
This is the same equation as would be used to calculate heat flow across a wall of known
conductivity. The difference in a heat exchanger is that the temperature of the fluids
changes significantly.
Without going into the details here, it can be shown that the effective temperature
difference for parallel and counter flow configurations can be calculated from the following
equation.
dt = (dt
i
dt
o
) / ln (dt
i
/ dt
o
)
Hence the name, log mean temperature difference. In the case of a cross flow and multi-
pass configurations, you would have to apply an additional correction factor.
The problem with the LMTD method is that the fluid leaving conditions must be known in
order to calculate the duty. Clearly, if you know the leaving conditions, then you already
know the duty. This makes the performance calculation of an existing coil an iterative
process. A difficulty that often appears during the course of a simulation is that successive
estimates of the leaving fluid temperatures could result in a negative (dt
i
/ dt
o
) and
consequently a program crash.


e-Ntu method
The e-Ntu method is based on the concept of an efficiency rating and is defined by the
following equation.
Q = e Q
max

The maximum duty can be easily determined when you realize that the fluid with the lowest
capacity rate C
min
will have the largest temperature difference. In an ideal heat exchanger,
that is one with an efficiency of 100%, the fluid with the lowest capacity rate will experience
the maximum possible temperature difference or the inlet temperature difference (ITD).
ITD = t
hi
t
ci

Q
max
= C
min
ITD
Now you can see the benefit of this method since it is based on inlet conditions only and the
actual duty is bounded between 0 and Q
max
or in other words, an effectiveness of 0 to 1.
It turns out that the effectiveness can be derived for many of the common heat exchanger
configurations. These are well known and published in most heat transfer books in the form
shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Effectiveness of a single pass counter-flow heat-exchanger

For a counter-flow configuration, the effectiveness can be calculated from the following
equation,
e = (1 e
Ntu (1-Cr)
) / (1 C
r
e
Ntu (1-Cr)
)
where the number of transfer units Ntu = U
o
A
o
/C
min
and the capacity ratio C
r
= C
min
/C
max


Step-by-step simulation
In developing theories, we often make assumptions to simplify the result so it would be
instructive to be able to make a practical comparison.
If we break the heat exchanger into a number of small pieces, it would be possible to
calculate the heat flow at each step without making any assumptions.
Figure 2. Thermal model of dry cooling

At each step, from t
ai
to t
ao
in the thermal model shown in Figure 2, the outside and inside
heat transfer relationships need to be reconciled
dq = h
o
dA
o
(t
a
t
s
)
dq = U
i
dA
i
(t
s
t
w
)
This allows the determination of the surface temperature, t
s
and consequently the
differential heat flow dq that is summed to get the total heat flow.
Looking at each fluid in turn, it is also possible to calculate the next temperature from
dq = C
a
dt
a
and dq = C
w
dt
w

In a counter flow arrangement, this is an iterative process since in the direction of the
airflow we would have to start with a guess of the leaving water temperature. At the end of
the cycle, the water inlet temperature must be compared with the known inlet water
temperature and the initial guess revised until a solution has been found.

Dealing with condensation
When the surface temperature falls below the dew point temperature of the air, there will be
condensation. This complicates matters since the energy balance must now include the
mass and energy flow of the condensate.
This means that there are two energy equations on the air-side, accounting for sensible and
latent heat.
dq
s
= h
o
dA
o
(t
a
t
s
)
dq
l
= h
d
dA
o
(W
a
W
s
) h
fg

By summing these two equations, it can be shown that the total energy can be
approximated in terms of an enthalpy potential.
dq
t
= h
d
dA
o
(h
a
h
s
)
So, the potential for heat transfer is the enthalpy difference between the moist air and the
enthalpy of saturated air at the surface temperature.

Simulation of a cooling coil with condensation
By incorporating the enthalpy potential, we can now simulate the performance of a cooling
coil with condensate. In Figure 3, we see that the surface is wet and therefore the enthalpy
at the surface is that of saturation air at the surface temperature.
Figure 3. Thermal model of wet cooling coil

In addition to the heat transfer, we can calculate the condensate flow from dm = h
d
dA
o
(W
a

W
s
) and consequently the absolute humidity at the next step as the simulation proceeds.
The psychrometric chart in figure 4 shows the actual simulated process and the by-pass
model based on the Ntu method.
Figure 4. Psychrometric chart showing simulation and Ntu model

Notice that I have chosen a water supply temperature that would ensure a fully wet coil. In
practice, it is possible that the inlet coil surface temperature could be above the air dew
point and the coil would start out dry. As the air moves through the coil, it would be
exposed to a lower temperature and condensation would start somewhere in the coil. This
complicates the Ntu process since the coil should really be split into a dry and wet portion.
The results of a wet coil model are however close enough not to warrant this precaution. In
the case of a partially wet coil, Braun et al have suggested using the average between the
wet and dry duties.

Problems with the LMTD method
The problem with the LMTD method is that it is only valid for single-phase heat transfer.
The reason is that the driving force is based on a temperature difference.
If your instinct was to consider a log mean enthalpy difference, you would be on the right
track. In fact, there are many references that adopt this approach (Kuehn et al ).
Another approach would be to apply a sensible heat correction factor to the outside film
coefficient. This would give an overall coefficient 1/U
o
= SHR/h
o
+ B/U
i
. This modification
is based on the air-side duty of dq
l
= (h
o
A
o
dt)/SHR and gives good correlation but does
not always behave well numerically.

Validity of e-Ntu
If the LMTD method doesnt work for a wet coil, why then should the e-Ntu method be any
different? The reason that it does work is that the maximum duty is based on the correct
driving force.
In a wet coil, the maximum duty is
Q
max
= m
a
(h
ai
h
swi
)
And the duty can be calculated directly from Q = e Q
max

For a wet coil, we now need to find a way to calculate the effectiveness.
If we equate the air and water-side duties
m
a
(h
ai
- h
ao
) = m
w
C
pw
(t
wi
- t
wo
)
and define a saturation specific heat as
C
s
= (h
swi
- h
swo
) /(t
wi
- t
wo
),
we can replace the water temperature difference and re-arrange the energy balance
equation into a form that looks similar to the dry case.
m
a
C
s
(h
ai
- h
ao
) = m
w
C
pw
(h
swi
- h
swo
)
By similarity, we can define the air capacity rate as C
a
= m
a
C
s
and adopt the effectiveness
method in the same way that we did with a dry process. The definition of the saturation
specific heat has given us this advantage.

Reference e-Ntu Method
The conventional e-Ntu method does work well, but is difficult to program since you need to
determine the maximum and minimum capacity rate in order to calculate the capacity ratio.
In addition, you must base the maximum duty on the fluid with the minimum capacity rate.
So, if for example you change the flow rate of the air, the relative positions of the fluids
need to be revised.
A possibility is to define a reference fluid and use this instead of the minimum capacity rate
fluid. If we select air to be the reference fluid, the duty can be calculated from the following.
Q = e Q
air

Q
dry
= m
a
C
pa
(t
ai
- t
wi
)
Q
wet
= m
a
(h
ai
- h
swi
)
e = (1 e
Ntu (1-Cr)
) / (1 C
r
e
Ntu (1-Cr)
)
C
r
= (m
a
C
s
) / (m
w
C
w
)
If there is no condensate, the coil is dry and C
s
= C
pm
. For a wet coil, we can define C
s
based
on the idea of the saturation specific heat.
C
s
= (h
swo
h
swi
) / (t
wo
t
wi
)
An additional useful step is to break up the Ntu into the outside and inside parts and
combining these like parallel heat flow paths.
Ntu = Ntu
o
/ (1 + C
r
Ntu
o
/Ntu
i
)
where Ntu
o
= h
o
A
o
/ (m
a
C
pa
) and Ntu
i
= U
i
A
i
/ (m
a
C
pw
).
By integrating the air-to-surface energy balance, this leads to the definition of a coil bypass
factor, b.
m
a
dh
a
= h
d
dA
o
(h
a
h
s
)
b = e
Ntuo

Where from the definition of the bypass factor, the leaving air state can be determined.
b = (h
ao
h
adp
) / (h
ai
h
adp
) = (W
ao
W
adp
) / (W
ai
W
adp
)

Comparison of Results
The calculated performance of a particular chilled water coil can now be compared with the
above methods. There are too many variables to give an exhaustive list so I have selected
a coil size and reference condition. Each test is based on the variation of a single parameter

Barometer = 101.325 kPa (sea level)
On coil = 25.0 / 17.0 C (dry bulb and wet bulb temperature)
Coil size = 533 high x 720 mm long x 4 row x 8 fins per inch
Air face velocity = 2.50 m/s
Water inlet temperature = 5.5 C
Water velocity in tube = 1 m/s
Design water temperature difference = 5.0 C
Table 1 Total and Sensible heat (kW) for the different methods








The results shown are a small set of the range of conditions that were tested. In all cases,
the total duty calculated by the e-Ntu method has proved to be within 0.6% of the
simulated results.
Notice that the standard LMTD method is generally not suitable for calculating the duty of a
wet coil. As the airflow is increased, the coil surface temperature increases and results in
less condensate. As this happens, the errors associated with the LMTD method are reduced.
Simulation Wet e-Ntu Dry LMTD
Reference condition 18.433 / 14.486 18.369 / 14.402
(0.34% error)
15.697 / 13.214
(15.8% error)
High on-coil, 30/20 C 24.469 / 17.980 24.433 / 17.887
(0.15% error)
19.851 / 15.955
(18.8% error)
Low water flow, 0.7 l/s 18.029 / 14.299 17.923 / 14.200
(0.59% error)
15.564 / 13.156
(13.7% error)
High airflow, 5 m/s 22.541 / 19.221 22.450 / 19.129
(0.40% error)
20.109 / 18.130
(10.7% error)

Conclusion
We have developed the equations of the wet effectiveness method and have shown by
simulation that the results conform to the results of a step-by-step calculation.
By applying the log mean temperature method to the simulated results, it is clear that this
method cannot be applied directly to a coil where condensation takes place.
For computer solution of cooling coils, the e-Ntu method offers a significant advantage over
the LMTD method. This is mainly due to the effectiveness being bounded in the range 0 to
1.
By adopting a reference fluid, it is possible to replace the conventional effectiveness
method. Although not material to the result, it does simplify the computer code since it
removes the need to determine the minimum and maximum capacity rate fluid.

Nomenclature
A Area, m
2

adp Apparatus dew point, C
C Capacity rate, kW/K (= m C
p
)
C
pm
Mean heat capacity of moist air at constant pressure, kJ/kgK
C
pw
Heat Capacity of water, kJ/kgK
C
s
Saturation specific heat, kJ/kgK
h Moist air enthalpy, kJ/kg
h
o
Air side film coefficient, W/mK
h
d
Mass transfer coefficient, kg/ms
h
fg
Latent heat of evaporation, kJ/kg
m Mass flow, kg/s
Ntu Number of transfer units
Q Overall heat transfer rate, kW
t Temperature, C
U Heat transfer coefficient, W/mK
W Humidity, kg/kg
b Bypass factor
e Effectiveness
d Differential