Interesting concept. Apparently coating condensers with a hydrophobic coating increases transfer efficiency because instead of having a constant film of water on your condensing surface, you get beads that quickly roll off. Would be interesting to try this with the stainless shell and tube on an FFE and see how it does
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Dropwise condensation has benefits for sure! Especially where water is involved (wildly more energy intensive to change phase)
We loved the concept so much we had to build one, even tho were not really working with aqueous vapors. The 710Sci black hole, odie and white dwarf cold traps are engineered to encourage dropwise condensation as well as other order-of-magnitude heat transfer improvements. Helps keep the trap from freezing terp film which kills efficiency further.
Weve been tryna find a way to make it cheaper, have ideas, but been back burner for a couple yrs as weve been developing Symphase+HVH50 so havent really been pushing it as of late.
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