COIL – Plate-Fin-Tube Coil Analyzer

Purpose

The purpose of this program is to analyze cooling and heating coils common to the HVAC industry.
The program is limited to the plate-fin-tube type with tube patterns quite general and ranging from inline to
staggered with variable tube diameter, fin thickness, fin pitch and tube wall thickness. Various fin and tube
materials may be chosen as well as various fluids and refrigerants. Several options are available.

Operation Overview

The main window of COIL is shown in the following figure. The file menu provides options for saving
and loading files. The Tabs are used to select one of the five Coil Analysis types. For the selected tab, coil data
is entered into the appropriate locations. Pressing the Analyze Coil Button will cause the analysis to be done,
and the analysis results will be displayed in a scrolling text window.

The five Coil Analysis types are:

Heating Coil with Warm Liquids, sensible heat transfer only

Heating Coil with Steam, sensible heat transfer only
Cooling Coil with Chilled Liquid, sensible and latent heat transfer
Cooling Coil with Refrigerant, sensible and latent heat transfer
Refrigerant Condenser
Results Window

The analysis results are displayed in a scrolling text window. The file menu allows the contents of the
window to be saved or printed. This screen is actually simple text editor. If you wish, you might add titles, notes
or comments to the file before you save or print the file.

Technical Considerations

Coils using liquids or steam require input of a circuit parameter from which the number of actual
circuits are determined. To understand this concept consider the following examples from the input screen:
Pass/row = 1 means that the fluid makes one pass through each row of tubes and the number of circuits is equal
to the number of tubes per row. Pass/row = 2 means the fluid makes two passes per row and the number of
circuits is equal to tubes/row divided by 2. One last example, if Pass/row = ½, two rows of tubes are required to
make one pass. Therefore, the number of circuits is equal to two times the number of tubes/row. For coils using
refrigerants, the number of circuits is given directly by the user.

Cooling coils using both chilled liquids and refrigerants may be analyzed. In both cases sensible and
latent heat transfer are involved. In cases where the liquid or refrigerant temperature is too high, only sensible
heat transfer will occur. The program will determine this condition and revert to sensible heat transfer only. The
user may also click the button for sensible heat transfer only.

For coils used as a Refrigerant Condenser, it is important to remember here that the condensing
refrigerant is at a higher temperature than the air flowing through the coil.

The user should strive to enter reasonable numbers with the correct relation to each other (for cooling,
tair > twater, etc.). The user should also be careful to enter legal circuit parameters. For example, Pass/row = 2 is
invalid for 13 tubes per row.