Abstract:Superhydrophobic surface can effectively inhibit frosting, but its application in the scale of heat exchanger and the study on its anti-frosting/defrosting behaviors are relatively lacking, which limits the application of superhydrophobic modification technology in solving the frosting problem of air source heat pump. In order to get the anti-frosting/defrosting performances of superhydrophobic heat exchanger, fin-tube heat exchanger with superhydrophobic surface was prepared integrally in this paper by etching bare unit in solution and then surface fluorinating. A frosting/defrosting experimental system was constructed to study the frosting and defrosting processes on heat exchangers with different surface characteristics. Experimental results showed that the frost mass on the superhydrophobic unit was reduced by 18.0% and 38.6% compared with that of the hydrophilic and bare units, when frosting 60 min under the same experimental conditions. In the aspect of defrosting, because of the direct peeling of the frost layer from fin surface, the superhydrophobic unit had short defrosting time and low defrosting energy consumption.