Frosting is an inevitable adverse phenomenon in many fields such as industrial refrigeration, cryogenics, and heat pump air conditioning, which may influence the efficiency of the equipment and increase the energy consumption of the system. The Complicated louveredfin structure and fluid-channels arrangements of the microchannel heat exchanger (HEX) will affect the heat transfer performance and frosting characteristics. First, this article analyzes the influence of factors such as refrigerant distribution characteristics, the refrigerant flow pattern, HEX surface temperature distribution, and surface frosting. Further, combined with the features of the microchannel HEX, the existing anti-frosting technologies and various methods of surface treatment for anti-frosting are summarized. A solution to improve the performance of HEX under hostile environments by preparing a super hydrophobic modified surface is proposed. Furthermore, the internal mechanism is analyzed in conjunction with the relevant research of our group. Meanwhile, the experimental results show that the super hydrophobic character has excellent anti-frosting performance and heat transfer performance, which is of great guiding significance for improving energy-saving and system performance. And finally, the future development of super hydrophobic surface technology is analyzed and prospected.
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