An Improved and Extended General Correlation for Heat Transfer During Condensation in Plain Tubes

An improved version of the authors's published correlation (Shah 1979), extended to a wider range of parameters, is presented. The new correlation has been shown to be in good agreement with data ranging from highly turbulent flows to the laminar flow conditions of Nusselt's analytical solutions. The data used for the correlation's validation includes 22 fluids (water, halocarbon refrigerants, hydrocarbon refrigerants, and organics) condensing in horizontal, vertical, and downward-inclined tubes. The range of parameters includes tube diameters from 2 to 49 mm, reduced pressure from 0.0008 to 0.9, flow rates from 4 to 820 kg/m2·s, all liquid Reynolds numbers from 68 to 85,000, and liquid Prandtl numbers from 1 to 18. A total of 1189 data points from 39 sources are predicted with a mean deviation of 14.4%. Comparisons are also made with some other well-known correlations.