As already demonstrated by many authors, the non-uniformity of the air distribution at the inlet of
both condensers and evaporators entails not negligible performance degradation. Its experimental
quantification is mainly complicated by the difficulties connected to the air velocity measurement in a
traditional air-conditioning installation. For this reason, many works are supported by the application
of CFD models or others simulation tools. In order to analyze experimentally the effect of the nonuniform
air distribution on the performance of a condenser, in this work a simple method for
generating a specific air velocity profile at the inlet of a heat exchanger will be presented. It consist in
allocating several filters along the heat exchanger height. Once characterized the filter, identifying the
relation between the length of the filters, the pressure drop and the air velocity, any type of air velocity
profile can be generated. The method presents high flexibility and allows being used with any
typology of heat exchanger. In this work, the method will be used for generating a non-uniform air
velocity profile at the inlet of two condenser: a round tube plate fins heat exchanger and a
microchannel heat exchanger. The results show that, with a specific distribution of the filters, the nonuniform
air velocity profile characterizing the A-shape condensation units has been reproduced with a
very good agreement.The work of Alessandro Pisano on this project was partially supported by the Ministry for Economy
and Finance of Spain, under the Training of Researcher program (FPI). Financial support from the
Ministry for Economy and Finance of Spain, project numbers: DPI2011-26771-C02-01 is gratefully
acknowledged
