Condensation of steam in the presence of air on a single tube and a tube bank

Data are presented for condensation of steam in cross-flow with and without the presence of air on the outside of a single tube and a bank of tubes. The tube bank consisted of ten staggered rows of two and one tubes per row. For pure steam the experimental results for both the single tube and tube bank gave good agreement with single-tube theory when account was taken of the reduction in vapour velocity due to condensation. There was some evidence, however, that condensate inundation may play a minor role in reducing heat-transfer coefficients on the lower tubes in the bank. For the case of condensation from steam-air mixtures, the single-tube data gave good agreement with theory. For condensation from steam-air mixtures on the bank of tubes, the data were significantly under predicted by single-tube theory, possibly because of mixing and re-circulation due to the complex flow pattern around the tubes. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.