Refrigerant falling film evaporation review: Description, fluid dynamics and heat transfer

Falling film horizontal tube evaporators for refrigeration equipment are an interesting alternative to pool boiling evaporators concerning operation costs, safety, thermodynamic efficiency, charge of refrigerant or size. Plenty of literature works studied falling film evaporation, but for its application in fields such as desalination and petrochemical industry or OTEC. This review focuses mainly on those works from the literature that analysed the main issues of falling film evaporation of refrigerants, to better understand heat transfer and fluid dynamics in such evaporators. First, falling film evaporation is described and compared to pool boiling, to define its main advantages and inconveniences. Then, the literature concerning film around the tubes and between them is analysed, as well as the phenomenon of film breakdown, which sharply deteriorates the heat transfer performance of falling film evaporators. After it, the results from those works that studied analytically and experimentally the heat transfer coefficients (HTCs) with different types of tubes and refrigerants are discussed. The review finishes with a brief summary of important parameters of falling film evaporation, which might be useful for the design of such equipment.