To address the wrong distribution of refrigerants in multi-path heat exchangers in air conditioners

a distributor

which is capable of evenly dividing a two-phase refrigerant

is proposed and tested using a visual experiment. The principle of the distributor design is to form an annular flow and then evenly allocate it. The detailed development method includes a calculation model for inlet tube geometries of the distributor to form an annular flow and a design method for the connection structure between the inlet and outlet tubes to uniformly distribute the annular flow. The experimental results show that when the mass flow rate is between 14 and 22 g/s

the distribution unevenness values of the novel distributor at the horizontal

sloped

and vertical installations are 10%–24%

14%–27%

and 24%–47%

respectively

which are lower than those of the conventional cone-type distributor

indicating much better performance of the proposed distributor.