Condenser for use in a car cooling system

A condenser for liquefying gaseous coolant in an air conditioning system of an automobile after the system has compressed the coolant, said condenser comprising:

• (i) a plurality of flat tubular elements defining flow paths and disposed in a spaced, substantially parallel relation, each element including at least one inside wall;
• (ii) a plurality of fin members, each fin member disposed between adjacent tubular elements;
• (iii) a pair of headers disposed in a spaced, substantially parallel relation at opposite ends of the tubular elements, the one and/or the other header defining a coolant inlet and a coolant outlet for the condenser, each header being an elongate member and defining, for each tubular element, an opening through which it receives the tubular element and establishes fluid communication with the element;
• (iv) at least one partitioning plate mounted in one of the headers transversely of the header to divide the inside opening of the header , said plate extending across an entire cross-sectional area of the inside opening of the header and being without perforations which allow fluid communication from one side of the plate to the other ;
• the coolant flowing from the inlet into one header and making a first pass through a plurality of the tubes to the other header, the coolant also making a final pass through a plurality of tubes to the outlet, the tubular elements and headers forming a first zone which receives gaseous coolant from the inlet and a final zone through which the coolant flows before discharging through the outlet, the effective cross sectional area of the flow paths defined by the tubular elements through which the coolant makes the final pass being smaller than the effective cross sectional area of the flow paths of those through which the coolant makes the first pass;
• said condenser being able to resist internal pressures greater than 10 atmospheres.