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Frost Growth CFD Model of an Integrated Active Desiccant Rooftop Unit...

by Patrick J Geoghegan, Andrei Y Petrov, Edward A Vineyard, Abdolreza Zaltash, Randall L Linkous
Publication Type
Conference Paper
Publication Date
Page Numbers
211 to 217
Conference Name
2007 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition
Conference Location
Seattle, Washington, United States of America
Conference Sponsor
American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME)
Conference Date
-

Abstract

A frost growth model is incorporated into a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation of a heat pump by means of a user-defined function in FLUENT, a commercial CFD code. The transient model is applied to the outdoor section of an Integrated Active Desiccant Rooftop (IADR) unit in heating mode.
IADR is a hybrid vapor compression and active desiccant unit capable of handling 100% outdoor air (dedicated outdoor air system) or as a total conditioning system, handling both outdoor air and space cooling or heating loads.
The predicted increase in flow resistance and loss in heat transfer capacity due to frost build-up are compared to experimental pressure drop readings and thermal imaging. The purpose of this work is to develop a CFD model that is capable of predicting frost growth, an invaluable tool in evaluating the effectiveness of defrost-on-demand cycles.