The purpose of this study is to investigate the behavior of operational and design factors on the performance characteristics of a horizontal fin-tube heat exchanger under phase change conditions for refrigerant. The flow and heat transfer in the heat exchanger are simulated numerically taking into account the variations of heat transfer coefficients, thermodynamic and flow properties of refrigerant, and the axial heat conduction in the tube wall. As the results of this study, it was found that the annular flow model was more reasonable physically than the homogeneous one for the two phase flow of refrigerant and axial heat conduction of tube wall did not have a great influence on the analysis. The effects of refrigerant pressure, mass flow rate of air, diameter of tube and the number of fins per unit length of tube were also discussed.