The effect of heat exchanger surface treatment on the frosting/defrosting behavior in a fin-tube heat exchanger is investigated experimentally. It is found that the hydrophilic surface mainly influences on the frosting behavior, however, the hydrophobic surface gives some influence on the defrosting behavior. In view of frosting performance, surface-treated heat exchanger with either hydrophilic or hydrophobic characteristic shows a little improvement in the thermal performance than the aluminium heat exchanger with no surface treatment. The result reveals that the heat exchanger with hydrophobic surface treatment is more effective in view of the defrosting efficiency and time. The amounts of residual water on the surface-treated heat exchangers are shown to be smaller than those of the bare heat exchanger, therefore further improvements on the performance of re-operations are expected