Copper Association Offers Free Design Software for Heat Exchangers

The International Copper Association (ICA) has released new design and simulation software for heat exchangers that use small-diameter MicroGroove tubes.

The software – HXSim "Small Diameter Copper Tube Air Conditioning Heat Exchanger Simulation Tool” Version 3.0  – can be freely downloaded online.

ICA promotes MicroGroove tubes, which are smaller-diameter (such as 5mm/0.2in) copper tubes used to create heat exchanger coils with high heat transfer coefficients. They are suitable for use in commercial and residential air conditioning and refrigeration products and can handle pressures up to 120Bar (1,740.45psi) in CO2 (R744) gas coolers.

HXSim 3.0, which was released by the U.S.-based ICA in March, can be used to design and simulate the performance of the three main types of heat exchanger blocks, the I-type, L-type and C-type. It can calculate heat exchanger capacity, air-side pressure drop, and refrigerant-side pressure drop.

The software is equipped with an “easy-to-understand” graphic user interface, which can provide both graphical and table format results. The results can be delivered in both 2D and 3D formats.

Users can run simulations for a number of refrigerant types, manipulating parameters like tube size, fin design and tube circuitry and many more, ICA said in a statement. The software comes with a built-in database of fin and tube types.

The outer diameter of MicroGroove tubes and tube wall thickness as well as the inside-the-tube enhancements can also be varied. 

The HXSim software was developed in a collaboration between ICA and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) under the leadership of Professor Guoliang Ding at the Institute of Refrigeration & Cryogenics.

It can be downloaded from the Microgroove website here.

Interested users can download and register with name and email. A free activation code will subsequently be emailed to them, courtesy of ICA.