Modelling of frost formation and growth on microstuctured surface

Frost formation on heat exchangers is an undesirable phenomenon often encountered in different applications where the cold surface with a temperature below freezing point of water is exposed to humid air. The formation of frost on the heat transfer surface results in an increase in pressure drop and reduction in heat transfer, resulting in a reduction of the system efficiency. Many factors, including the temperature and moisture content of air, cold plate temperature, surface wettability etc., are known to affect frost formation and growth. In our present study, a model for frost growth on rectangular, periodic microgroove surfaces for a range of microgroove dimension (ten to hundreds of micron) is presented. The mathematical model is developed analytically by solving the governing heat and mass transfer equations with appropriate boundary conditions using the EES (Engineering Equation Solver) software. For temperature, a convective boundary condition at frost-air interface and a fixed cold plate surface temperature is used. Instead of considering the saturation or super-saturation models, density gradient at the surface is obtained by considering experimentally-found specified heat flux. The effect of surface wettability is incorporated by considering the distribution of condensed water droplets at the early stage of frost formation. Thickness, density and thermal conductivity of frost layer on the micro-grooved surfaces are found to vary with the dimension of the grooves. The variation of density and thickness of the frost layer on these micro-grooved surfaces under natural convection is numerally determined for a range of plate temperature and air temperature conditions and is compared with experimental results found in the open literature.