scholarly journals Numerical Investigation of Thermal Hydraulic Performance of Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger of Periodic Diamond Channel Shape

2022 ◽  
Vol 961 (1) ◽  
pp. 012010
Author(s):  
Ali M Aljelawy ◽  
Amer M Aldabbagh ◽  
Falah F Hatem

Abstract One of the most recently important heat exchangers is the Printed circuit heat exchanger especially in the nuclear power plant and aerospace applications due to its very compact geometry and small print foot. This paper presents a 3D numerical investigation on the thermo-hydraulic performance of PCHE with new non-uniform channel design configuration. The new channel design is a rectangular cross section with repeated converging diverging sections or periodic diamond shape. The influence of three design parameters on the heat exchanger performance was studied and optimized, pitch length (p), length ratio (β) and the converging diverging angle (α). The computational models investigated in this study based on the operating conditions of the intermediate heat exchanger of very high temperature gas cooled reactor with helium as the working fluid under operating pressure of 3Mpa and inlet temperature of 800 K. The Reynolds number varied from 200 to 2000. Different Pitch lengths were used (1.59, 3.18, 6.36, and 12.73) mm, and different C-D angle (0, 4.5, 6, 7.5, 9, 10.5 and 12) and also different length ratios were used (0.2, 0.25 and 0.333). Three performance parameters were studied the Nusselt number, friction factor and the overall performance evaluation factor. Results show that the thermal performance enhanced with decreasing the pitch length and with increasing C-D angle and it was shown that this enhancement was found only at high Reynolds number above 1400. The best performance obtained at p=3.18, α=6 and β=0.25 based on the overall evaluation performance.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana C. Ferreira ◽  
Senhorinha F. C. F. Teixeira ◽  
Ricardo F. Oliveira ◽  
José C. Teixeira

Abstract An alpha-Stirling configuration was modelled using a Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD), using ANSYS® software. A Stirling engine is an externally heated engine which has the advantage of working with several heat sources with high efficiencies. The working gas flows between compression and expansion spaces by alternate crossing of, a low-temperature heat exchanger (cooler), a regenerator and a high-temperature heat exchanger (heater). Two pistons positioned at a phase angle of 90 degrees were designed and the heater and cooler were placed on the top of the pistons. The motion of the boundary conditions with displacement was defined through a User Defined Function (UDF) routine, providing the motion for the expansion and compression piston, respectively. In order to define the temperature differential between the engine hot and the cold sources, the walls of the heater and cooler were defined as constant temperatures, whereas the remaining are adiabatic. The objective is to study the thermal behavior of the working fluid considering the piston motion between the hot and cold sources and investigate the effect of operating conditions on engine performance. The influence of regenerator matrix porosity, hot and cold temperatures on the engine performance was investigated through predicting the PV diagram of the engine. The CFD simulation of the thermal engine’s performance provided a Stirling engine with 760W of power output. It was verified that the Stirling engine can be optimized when the best design parameters combination are applied, mostly the regenerator porosity and cylinders volume, which variation directly affect the power output.


Author(s):  
Su-Jong Yoon ◽  
James O'Brien ◽  
Piyush Sabharwall ◽  
Kevin Wegman ◽  
Xiaodong Sun

Effective and robust high-temperature heat transport systems are essential for the successful deployment of advanced high temperature reactors. The printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) is a strong potential candidate for the intermediate or secondary loop of high temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) due to their high power density and compactness. For high-temperature PCHE applications, the heat loss, which is difficult to be insulated completely, could lead to the degradation of heat exchanger performance. This paper describes an analytical methodology to evaluate the thermal-hydraulic performance of PCHEs from experimental data, accounting for extraneous heat losses. Experimental heat exchanger effectiveness results, evaluated without accounting for heat loss, exhibited significant data scatter while the data were in good agreement with the ε-NTU method once the heat loss was accounted for. The deformation of PCHEs would occur during the diffusion-bonding fabrication process or high temperature operations due to the thermal deformation. Computational assessment of the PCHE performance test data conducted at the Ohio State University showed that the deformation of flow channels caused increase of pressure loss of the heat exchanger. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation results based on the nominal design parameters underestimated the pressure loss of the heat exchanger compared to the experimental data. Image analysis for the flow channel inlet and outlet was conducted to examine the effect of channel deformation on the heat exchanger performance. The CFD analysis based on the equivalent channel diameter obtained from the image analysis resulted in a better prediction of PCHE pressure loss.


Author(s):  
Zhongchao Zhao ◽  
Kai Zhao ◽  
Dandan Jia ◽  
Pengpeng Jiang ◽  
Rendong Shen

As a new kind of highly compact and efficient micro-channel heat exchanger, printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) is a promising candidate satisfying the heat exchange requirements of liquefied natural gas (LNG) vaporization at low and high pressure. The effects of airfoil fin arrangement on heat transfer an flow resistance were numerically investigated using supercritical liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a working fluid. The thermal properties of supercritical LNG were tested by utilizing a REFPROF software database. Numerical simulation was performed using FLUENT. The inlet temperature of supercritical LNG was 121 K,and its pressure was 10.5MPa. The reference mass flow rate of LNG was set 1.22 g/s for the vertical pitch Lv = 1.67 mm and the staggered pitch Ls = 0 mm, with the Reynolds number of about 3750. The SST k-ω model with enhanced wall treatment was selected by comparing with the experimental data. The airfoil fin PCHE had better thermal-hydraulic performance than that of the straight channel PCHE. Moreover, the airfoil fins with staggered arrangement displayed better thermal performance than that of the fins with parallel arrangement. The thermal-hydraulic performance of airfoil fin PCHE was improved with increasing Ls and Lv. Moreover, Lv  affected on the Nusselt number and pressure drop of airfoil fin PCHE more obviously. In conclusion, a sparser staggered arrangement of fins showed a better thermal-hydraulic performance in airfoil fin PCHE.


Author(s):  
Noman Yousuf ◽  
Timothy Anderson ◽  
Roy Nates

Abstract Despite being identified nearly a century ago, the diffusion absorption refrigeration (DAR) cycle has received relatively little attention. One of the strongest attractions of the DAR cycle lies in the fact that it is thermally driven and does not require high value work. This makes it a prime candidate for harnessing low grade heat from solar collectors, or the waste heat from stationary generators, to produce cooling. However, to realize the benefits of the DAR cycle, there is a need to develop an improved understanding of how design parameters influence its performance. In this vein, this work developed a new parametric model that can be used to examine the performance of the DAR cycle for a range of operating conditions. The results showed that the cycle's performance was particularly sensitive to several factors: the rate of heat added and the temperature of the generator, the effectiveness of the gas and solution heat exchangers, the mass flowrate of the refrigerant and the type of the working fluid. It was shown that can deliver good performance at low generator temperatures if the refrigerant mass fraction in the strong solution is made as high as possible. Moreover, it was shown that a H2O-LiBr working pair could be useful for achieving cooling at low generator temperatures.


2014 ◽  
Vol 591 ◽  
pp. 3-6
Author(s):  
M. Raja ◽  
R. Vijayan ◽  
R. Vivekananthan ◽  
M.A. Vadivelu

In the present work, the effect of nanofluid in a shell and tube heat exchanger was studied numerically. The effects of Reynolds number, volume concentration of suspended nanoparticles on the heat transfer characteristics were investigated using CFD software. Finally, the effect of the nanofluid on Shell and tube heat exchanger performance was studied and compared to that of a conventional fluid (i.e., water).


Author(s):  
Josua P. Meyer ◽  
Leon Liebenberg ◽  
Jonathan A. Olivier

Heat exchangers are usually designed in such a way that they do not operate in the transition region. This is usually due to a lack of information in this region. However, due to design constraints, energy efficiency requirements or change of operating conditions, heat exchangers are often forced to operate in this region. It is also well known that entrance disturbances influence where transition occurs. The purpose of this paper is to present experimental heat transfer and pressure drop data in the transition region for fully developed and developing flows inside smooth tubes using water as the working fluid. The use of different inlet disturbances were used to investigate its effect on transition. A tube-in-tube heat exchanger was used to perform the experiments, which ranged in Reynolds numbers from 1 000 to 20 000, with Prandtl numbers being between 4 and 6 while Grashof numbers were in the order of 105. Results showed that the type of inlet disturbance could delay transition to a Reynolds number as high as 7 000, while other inlets expedited it, confirming results of others. For heat transfer, though, it was found that transition was independent of the inlet disturbance and all commenced at the same Reynolds number, 2 000–3 000, which was attributed to secondary flow effects.


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