Suppression of frost formation on a cryogenically cooled cylinder using an obstacle.

Frost formation on a heat exchanger has been recognized as serious technical problem. Many researchers have studied and proposed countermeasures against frost formation. However, there is still no comprehensive solution to it. In this study, we propose a new method to suppress frost formation. In this method, an obstacle is set in front of the cooling tube. We conducted experiments on this new method using a cooling tube with a cryogenically cooled surface. We concluded that this method was effective not only for suppressing frost growth but also increasing the amount of heat transferred. Additionally, we conducted experiments with varying the distance between an obstacle and a cooling tube. Results show that the distance should be short to suppress pressure drop increase.