Cooling Coil Selection Today most of the coil manufacturing companies offer proprietary software for selecting a DX or chilled

water cooling coil. But there are times when the coil selection programme can not be used either for want of time or want of details. A sales engineer in an AC&R company often faces this situation when he/she has to prepare offers without complete data or at a very short notice. He/she sketchily estimates the AC load and the dehumidified air quantity and goes on to select equipment. He/she can not be blamed. However the following table ( Table 1) will help in sizing a cooling coil for the purpose of estimation. Table 1 Dehumidified cfm/TR 600 500 400 300 200 200 400 300 0.01 Coil Face Velocity fpm 500 500 0.08 0.015 8 Bypass factor 0.2 0.1 4 6 No. of rows 3 4

Thee assumptions are useful in doing iterations while sizing the coils without a software programme.

Selection Procedure :
A) Data Required For sizing the coil, the following data will be required from heat load calculations. Room DB temperature/Return air DB temperature (F) Fresh air DB temperature (F) Dehumidified air quantity (cfm) Fresh air quantity (cfm) Grand sensible heat factor AC load (TR) ADP (F) B) Assumptions To start with, the following assumptions will have to be made Face velocity ( fpm) Bypass factor (depends on no. of rows required) Chilled water entering and leaving temperature ( EWT and LWT ) or temperature of refrigerant in the evaporator coil. (Tref) No. of circuits (1 TR/circuit for 5/8 coil) The values for the above parameters can be refined through iterations. Coil geometry 1. Copper tube 5/8 OD, 22G thick , 1 centre ,staggered from row to row 2. Aluminium fins 8 fpi, 1 wide per row 3. Outside surface 22 sqft./row/face area 4. Inside surface 1.2 sqft /row/face area 5. Outside to inside surface area ratio R = 18.3 6. Metal resistance rm=0.025 hr.sqft.F/Btu

C)

To calculate LMTD 1. Calculate DB temperature of mixture of return air and fresh air entering the coil. DB (mix) = DB(RA) x RA cfm + DB(FA) x FA cfm Dehumidified air cfm (Dehumidified.air = Return air + Fresh air) 2.Calculate DB temperature of air leaving the coil : DB(lvg air) = DB(mix) (1-BF) (DB(mix) ADP) BF = Bypass factor 3. Calculate LMTD for DX coil : GTD = DB(mix) Tref For chilled water coil : GTD = DB(mix) - LWT LMTD = GTD - LTD Ln GTD/LTD LTD = DB(lvg air) EWT LTD = DB(lvg air) - Tref

D)

To calculate U value The overall heat transfer coefficient U depends on the following factors. 1. Inside film coefficient Ki Experimental data is available for chilled water and refrigerant. Please refer to Table 2 and Table 3 Table 2 Boiling refrigerant coefficient k (for direct expansion in coils) Refrigerant flow TR/circuit 0.5 0.7 0.8 1.2 1.5 1.7 250 375 Tube OD (inch) 5/8 250 400 500 250 375 Table 3 Heat transfer coefficients for water inside tubes Water velocity fps 1 2 3 4 6 8 Inside tube dia 0.6, water temp. 40 F 230 400 550 720 1000 1250

Ki for chilled water coil. 1 Calculate water flow : Waterflow = 2 TR x 12000 500 x (LWT EWT)

Calculate water velocity through tube. WV = waterflow No. of circuits x 1.2 fps

Calculate Ki using table 3

Ki for Dxcoil Assume 1 TR/circuit to start with. Read Ki from Table 2 2. Metal resistance : For the selected coil geometry the metal resistance is 0.025 hr.sqft.F/Btu 3. Outside film coefficient Ko.

Outside film coefficient Ko depends on face velocity and grand sensible heat factor. Refer to table 4 Table 4 Outside film coefficient (for dry coil) Coil face velocity Firm 100 200 300 400 500 600 Ko Btu/hr.sqft.F 4.1 6.3 8.0 9.6 11.0 12.3

For wet coil (GSHF < 1) the value of Ko is calculated as under : Ko = Ko (dry coil) GSHF 4. The U - value The overall U-value is calculated using the following equation. 1 u = 1+ rm + ko R ki

5. Calculating the coil face area :

Coil face area (sq.ft) = Deh. Air quantity Face velocity 6. Deciding the number of rows of coil : Calculate the no. of rows required using the equation: No. of rows = TR x 12000 U x LMTD x face area x outside surface area per face area

The assumption of bypass factor can be verified using Table 5 based on the no. of rows required as calculated above. A safety margin of 5 10% will be advisable. Table 5 No of rows 300 2 0.225 3 0.107 4 0.052 5 0.025 6 0.012 Coil face velocity fpm 400 500 600 0.274 0.314 0.346 0.143 0.176 0.204 0.076 0.099 0.120 0.040 0.056 0.071 0.022 0.032 0.042

The procedure can be repeated for: a. b. E) 1. different value of face velocity different Tref or EWT. What if the coil geometry is different . More no. of fins per inch. For 10 fpi, no. of rows required = no of rows (8fpi) 1.1 For 12 fpi, no. of rows required = no. of rows (18fpi) 1.18 copper tube coil with 1.25 pitch The face area and no. of rows arrived by the above procedure, gives 5 10% extra safety. Water side pressure drop calculations will change. 3. Thinner copper tube The data available for 22G thick coil can be used since the effect on U-value due to change in thickness of copper tube will be insignificant. Waterside pressure drop calculations will change.

2.

Enhanced fin profile. The procedure can be used by keeping reduced safety margins.

References : 1. 2. 3. Tested Solutions to design problems in AC & R by M. A. Ramsay. The Industrial Press 1963 (Table 2 to 4) Blue Star Engineers Handbook Voltas Engineers Handbook (Different with geometry) ( Table 5)