Aerodynamic and Thermal Measurements in a Standing Wave Thermoacoustic Refrigerator

Author(s):  
Gaelle Poignand ◽  
Emmanuel Jondeau ◽  
Philippe Blanc-Benon

Thermoacoustic refrigerators produce a cooling power from an acoustic energy. Over the last decades, these devices have been extensively studied since they are environment-friendly, robust and miniaturizable. Despite all these advantages, their commercialization is limited by their low efficiency. One reason for this limitation comes from the complex thermo-fluid process between the stack and the two heat exchangers which is still not sufficiently understood to allow for optimization. In particular, at high acoustic pressure level, vortex shedding can occur behind the stack as highlight by [Berson & al., Heat Mass Trans, 44, 10151023 (2008)]. The created vortex can affect heat transfer between the stack and the heat exchangers and thus, they can reduce the system performance. In this work, aerodynamic and thermal measurements are both conducted in a standing wave thermoacoustic refrigerator allowing investigation of vortex influence on the system performance. The proposed device consists on a resonator operated at frequency of 200 Hz, with hot and cold heat exchangers placed at the stack extremities. The working fluid is air at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure. The aerodynamic field behind the stack is described using high-speed Particle Image Velocimetry. This technique allows the acoustic velocity field measurement at a frequency up to 3000 Hz. Thermal measurements consist on the acquisition of both the temperature evolution along the stack and the heat fluxes extracted at the cold heat exchanger. These measurements are performed by specific micro-sensors developed by MEMS technology. The combination of these two measurements should be helpful for the further understanding of the heat transfer between the stack and the heat exchangers.

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 89-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakub Kajurek ◽  
Artur Rusowicz ◽  
Andrzej Grzebielec

Abstract Thermoacoustic refrigerator uses acoustic power to transport heat from a low-temperature source to a high-temperature source. The increasing interest in thermoacoustic technology is caused due to its simplicity, reliability as well as application of environmentally friendly working fluids. A typical thermoacoustic refrigerator consists of a resonator, a stack of parallel plates, two heat exchangers and a source of acoustic wave. The article presents the influence of the stack position in the resonance tube and the acoustic frequency on the performance of thermoacoustic refrigerator with a standing wave driven by a loudspeaker, which is measured in terms of the temperature difference between the stack edges. The results from experiments, conducted for the stack with the plate spacing 0.3 mm and the length 50 mm, acoustic frequencies varying between 100 and 400 Hz and air as a working fluid are consistent with the theory presented in this paper. The experiments confirmed that the temperature difference for the stack with determined plate spacing depends on the acoustic frequency and the stack position. The maximum values were achieved for resonance frequencies and the stack position between the pressure and velocity node.


Author(s):  
Konstantin I. Matveev ◽  
Scott Backhaus ◽  
Gregory W. Swift

Thermoacoustic engines and refrigerators use the interaction between heat and sound to produce acoustic energy or to transport thermal energy. Heat leaks in thermal buffer tubes and pulse tubes, components in thermoacoustic devices that separate heat exchangers at different temperatures, reduce the efficiency of these systems. At high acoustic amplitudes, Rayleigh mass streaming can become the dominat means for undesirable heat leak. Gravity affects the streaming flow patterns and influences streaming-induced heat convection. A simplified analytical model is constructed that shows gravity can reduce the streaming heat leak dramatically.


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.


Author(s):  
Ece Özkaya ◽  
Selin Aradag ◽  
Sadik Kakac

In this study, three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses are performed to assess the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of a commercial Gasketed Plate Heat Exchangers (GPHEx) with 30 degrees of chevron angle (Plate1). The results of CFD analyses are compared with a computer program (ETU HEX) previously developed based on experimental results. Heat transfer plate is scanned using photogrammetric scan method to model GPHEx. CFD model is created as two separate flow zones, one for each of hot and cold domains with a virtual plate. Mass flow inlet and pressure outlet boundary conditions are applied. The working fluid is water. Temperature and pressure distributions are obtained for a Reynolds number range of 700–3400 and total temperature difference and pressure drop values are compared with ETU HEX. A new plate (Plate2) with corrugation pattern using smaller amplitude is designed and analyzed. The thermal properties are in good agreement with experimental data for the commercial plate. For the new plate, the decrease of the amplitude leads to a smaller enlargement factor which causes a low heat transfer rate while the pressure drop remains almost constant.


2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chirag R. Kharangate ◽  
Ki Wook Jung ◽  
Sangwoo Jung ◽  
Daeyoung Kong ◽  
Joseph Schaadt ◽  
...  

Three-dimensional (3D) stacked integrated circuit (IC) chips offer significant performance improvement, but offer important challenges for thermal management including, for the case of microfluidic cooling, constraints on channel dimensions, and pressure drop. Here, we investigate heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of a microfluidic cooling device with staggered pin-fin array arrangement with dimensions as follows: diameter D = 46.5 μm; spacing, S ∼ 100 μm; and height, H ∼ 110 μm. Deionized single-phase water with mass flow rates of m˙ = 15.1–64.1 g/min was used as the working fluid, corresponding to values of Re (based on pin fin diameter) from 23 to 135, where heat fluxes up to 141 W/cm2 are removed. The measurements yield local Nusselt numbers that vary little along the heated channel length and values for both the Nu and the friction factor do not agree well with most data for pin fin geometries in the literature. Two new correlations for the average Nusselt number (∼Re1.04) and Fanning friction factor (∼Re−0.52) are proposed that capture the heat transfer and pressure drop behavior for the geometric and operating conditions tested in this study with mean absolute error (MAE) of 4.9% and 1.7%, respectively. The work shows that a more comprehensive investigation is required on thermofluidic characterization of pin fin arrays with channel heights Hf < 150 μm and fin spacing S = 50–500 μm, respectively, with the Reynolds number, Re < 300.


Author(s):  
Ayman Megahed ◽  
Ibrahim Hassan ◽  
Tariq Ahmad

The present study focuses on the experimental investigation of boiling heat transfer characteristics and pressure drop in a silicon microchannel heat sink. The microchannel heat sink consists of a rectangular silicon chip in which 45 rectangular microchannels were chemically etched with a depth of 295 μm, width of 254 μm, and a length of 16 mm. Un-encapsulated Thermochromic liquid Crystals (TLC) are used in the present work to enable nonintrusive and high spatial resolution temperature measurements. This measuring technique is used to provide accurate full and local surface-temperature and heat transfer coefficient measurements. Experiments are carried out for mass velocities ranging between 290 to 457 kg/m2.s and heat fluxes from 6.04 to 13.06 W/cm2 using FC-72 as the working fluid. Experimental results show that the pressure drop increases as the exit quality and the flow rate increase. High values of heat transfer coefficient can be obtained at low exit quality (xe < 0.2). However, the heat transfer coefficient decreases sharply and remains almost constant as the quality increases for an exit quality higher than 0.2.


Author(s):  
Pei-Xue Jiang ◽  
Rui-Na Xu ◽  
Zhi-Hui Li ◽  
Chen-Ru Zhao

The convection heat transfer of CO2 at supercritical pressures in a 0.0992 mm diameter vertical tube at relatively high Reynolds numbers (Rein = 6500), various heat fluxes and flow directions are investigated experimentally and numerically. The effects of buoyancy and flow acceleration resulting from the dramatic property variations are studied. The Results show that the local wall temperature varied non-linearly for both upward and downward flow when the heat flux was high. The difference in the local wall temperature between upward and downward flow is very small when the other test conditions are held the same, which indicates that for supercritical CO2 flowing in a micro tube as employed in this study, the buoyancy effect on the convection heat transfer is insignificant and the flow acceleration induced by the axial density variation with temperature is the main factor leading to the abnormal local wall temperature distribution at high heat fluxes. The predicted temperatures using the LB low Reynolds number turbulence model correspond well with the measured data. To further study the influence of flow acceleration on the convection heat transfer, air is also used as the working fluid to numerically investigate the fluid flow and heat transfer in the vertical micro tube. The results show that the effect of compressibility on the fluid flow and heat transfer of air in the vertical micro tube is significant but that the influence of thermal flow acceleration on convection heat transfer of air in a vertical micro tube is insignificant.


Author(s):  
Saurish Das ◽  
Hemant Punekar

In modern cooling systems the requirement of higher performance demands highest possible heat transfer rates, which can be achieved by controlled nucleate boiling. Boiling based cooling systems are gaining attention in several engineering applications as a potential replacement of conventional single-phase cooling system. Although the controlled nucleate boiling enhances the heat transfer, uncontrolled boiling may lead to Dry Out situation, adversely affecting the cooling performance and may also cause mechanical damage due to high thermal stresses. Designing boiling based cooling systems requires a modeling approach based on detailed fundamental understanding of this complex two-phase heat and mass transfer phenomenon. Such models can help analyze different cooling systems, detect potential design flaws and carry out design optimization. In the present work a new semi-mechanistic wall boiling model is developed within commercial CFD solver ANSYS FLUENT. A phase change mechanism and wall heat transfer augmentation due to nucleate boiling are implemented in mixture multiphase flow framework. The phase change phenomenon is modeled using mechanistic evaporation-condensation model. Enhancement of wall heat transfer due to nucleate boiling is captured using 1D empirical correlation, modified for 3D CFD environment. A new method is proposed to calculate the local suppression of nucleate boiling based on the flow velocity, and hence this model can be applied to any complex shaped coolant passage. For different wall superheat, the wall heat fluxes predicted by the present model are validated against experimental data, in which 50-50 volume mixture of aqueous ethylene glycol (a typical anti-freeze coolant mixture) is used as working fluid. The validation study is performed in ducts of different sizes and shapes with different inlet velocities, inlet sub-cooling and operating pressures. The results are in good agreement with the experiments. This model is applied to a typical automobile Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) system to study boiling heat transfer phenomenon and the results are presented.


1998 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 477-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. S. El-Genk ◽  
H. H. Saber

Heat transfer correlations were developed for the liquid film region, in the evaporator section of closed, two-phase, gravity-assisted thermosyphons in the following regimes: (a) laminar convection, at low heat fluxes, (b) combined convection, at intermediate heat fluxes, and (c) nucleate boiling, at high heat fluxes. These correlations were based on a data set consisting of a total of 305 points for ethanol, acetone, R-11, and R-113 working fluids, wall heat fluxes of 0.99–52.62 kW/m2, working fluid filling ratios of 0.01–0.62, inner diameters of 6–37 mm, evaporator section lengths of 50–609.6 mm, and vapor temperatures of 261–352 K. The combined convention data were correlated by superimposing the correlations of laminar convention and nucleate boiling using a power law approach, to ensure smooth transition among the three heat transfer regimes. The three heat transfer correlations developed in this work are within ±15 percent of experimental data.


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