Numerical modeling of compact high temperature heat exchanger and chemical decomposer for hydrogen production

The present study addresses fluid flow and heat transfer in a high temperature compact heat exchanger which will be used as a chemical decomposer in a hydrogen production plant. The heat exchanger is manufactured using fused ceramic layers that allow creation of channels with dimensions below 1 mm. The main purpose of this study is to increase the thermal performance of the heat exchanger, which can help to increase the sulfuric acid decomposition rate. Effects of various channel geometries of the heat exchanger on the pressure drop are studied as well. A three-dimensional computational model is developed for the investigation of fluid flow and heat transfer in the heat exchanger. Several different geometries of the heat exchanger channels, such as straight channels, ribbed ground channels, hexagonal channels, and diamond-shaped channels are examined. Based on the results, methods on how to improve the design of the heat exchanger are recommended.     

A study on the correlation between the thermal contact conductance and effective factors in fin–tube heat exchangers with 9.52 mm tube

The thermal contact resistance is a principal parameter interfering with heat transfer in a fin–tube heat exchanger. However, the thermal contact resistance in the interface between tubes and fins has not been clearly investigated. The objective of the present study is to examine the thermal contact conductance for various fin–tube heat exchangers with tube diameter of 9.52 mm and to find a correlation between the thermal contact conductance and effective factors such as expansion ratio, fin type, fin spacing and hydrophilic coating. In this study, experiments have been conducted only to measure heat transfer rate between hot and cold water. To minimize heat loss to the ambient air by the natural convection fin–tube heat exchangers have been placed in an insulated vacuum chamber. Also, a numerical scheme has been employed to calculate the thermal contact conductance with the experimental data. As a result, a new correlation including the influences of expansion ratio, slit of fin and fin coating has been introduced, and the portion of each thermal resistance has been estimated in the fin–tube heat exchangers with 9.52 mm tube.     

The thermodynamic design of heat and mass transfer processes and devices

This review article places in perspective the new work devoted both to the analysis of the thermodynamic irreversibility of heat and mass transfer components and systems and to the design of these devices on the basis of entropy generation minimization. The review focuses on the fundamental mechanisms responsible for the generation of entropy in heat and fluid flow and on the design tradeoff of balancing the heat transfer irreversibility against the fluid flow irreversibility. Applications are selected from the fields of heat exchanger design, thermal energy storage, and mass exchanger design. This article provides a comprehensive, up-to-date review of second-daw analyses published in the heat and mass transfer literature during the last decade.     

Thermal behavior of spiral fin-and-tube heat exchanger having fly ash deposit

This research investigates the effect of fly-ash deposit on thermal performance of a cross-flow heat exchanger having a set of spiral finned-tubes as a heat transfer surface. A stream of warm air having high content of fly-ash is exchanging heat with a cool water stream in the tubes. In this study, the temperature of the heat exchanger surface is lower than the dew point temperature of air, thus there is condensation of moisture in the air stream on the heat exchanger surface. The affecting parameters such as the fin spacing, the air mass flow rate, the fly-ash mass flow rate and the inlet temperature of warm air are varied while the volume flow rate and the inlet temperature of the cold water stream are kept constant at 10 l/min and 5 °C, respectively.

From the experiment, it is found that as the testing period is shorter than 8 h the thermal resistance due to the fouling increases with time. Moreover, the deposit of fly-ash on the heat transfer surface is directly proportional to the dust–air ratio and the amount of condensate on heat exchange surface. However, the deposit of fly-ash is inversely proportional to the fin spacing. The empirical model for evaluating the thermal resistance is also developed in this work and the simulated results agree well with those of the measured data.     

In search of physical parameters influenced by flow patterns in a heterogeneous two-phase mixture in microchannels using concomitant measurements

Space transportation systems require high-performance thermal protection and fluid management for systems ranging from cryogenic fluid devices to primary structures, and for propulsion systems exposed to extremely high temperatures, and other space systems, e.g., integrated circuits and cooling/environment control devices for advanced space suits. Although considerable developmental effort is underway to bring promising technologies to a readiness level for practical use, new and innovative methods are still needed. One such method is the Advanced Micro Cooling Module (AMCM), essentially a compact two-phase heat exchanger constructed of microchannels and designed to rapidly remove large quantities of heat from critical systems by incorporating phase transition. This paper describes the results of experimental research in two-phase flow phenomena, encompassing both an experimental and an analytical approach to the incorporation of flow patterns for air–water mixtures flowing in microchannels. Specifically addressed are: (1) design and construction of a sensitive two-phase experimental system which measures both ac and dc components of in situ physical mixture parameters including spatial concentration, using concomitant methods; (2) data acquisition and analysis in the amplitude, time, and frequency domains; and (3) analysis of results including evaluation of in situ physical parameters, and assessment of their validity for application in flow pattern determination.     

Predict the temperature distribution in gas-to-gas heat pipe heat exchanger

A theoretical model has been developed to investigate the thermal performance of a continuous finned circular tubing of an air-to-air thermosyphon-based heat pipe heat exchanger. The model has been used to determine the heat transfer capacity, which expresses the thermal performance of heat pipe heat exchanger. The model predicts the temperature distribution in the flow direction for both evaporator and condenser sections and also the saturation temperature of the heat pipes. The approach used for the present study considers row-by-row heat-transfer in evaporator and condenser sections of the heat pipe heat exchanger.     

Comparisons of the heat transfer and pressure drop of the microchannel and minichannel heat exchangers

The present study investigated the comparisons of the heat transfer and pressure drop of the microchannel and minichannel heat exchangers, both numerically and experimentally. The results obtained from this study indicated that the heat transfer rate obtained from microchannel heat exchanger was higher than those obtained from the minichannel heat exchangers; however, the pressure drops obtained from the microchannel heat exchanger were also higher than those obtained from the minichannel heat exchangers. As a result, the microchannel heat exchanger should be selected for the systems where high heat transfer rates are needed. In addition, at the same average velocity of water in the channels used in this study, the effectiveness obtained from the microchannel heat exchanger was 1.2–1.53 times of that obtained from the minichannel heat exchanger. Furthermore, the results obtained from the experiments were in good agreement with those obtained from the design theory and the numerical analyses.     

Performance optimization of two-bed closed-cycle solid-sorption heat pump systems

The performance of two-bed, closed-cycle solid-sorption heat pumps are affected by the switching frequencies at which the sorbent beds are cycled between the regeneration and adsorption processes. However, there always exists a switching frequency that optimizes the system performance (i.e., thermal COP) for given design and operating conditions. In this paper, the performance of two-bed, closed-cycle solidsorption heat pumps are optimized based on the switching frequency and the effect of the design and operating parameters on the optimum performance are investigated. The effect of the sorbent bedNTU, the thermal resistance within the sorbent, the contact resistance between the sorbent and the tube wall of the heat transfer fluid, the fraction of inert mass within the sorbent bed heat exchanger, and amount of fluid resident within the heat exchanger, on the optimum system performance is documented.     

Theoretical investigation on thermal performance of heat pipe flat plate solar collector with cross flow heat exchanger

Based on the heat transfer characteristics of absorber plate and the heat transfer effectiveness-number of heat transfer unit method of heat exchanger, a new theoretical method of analyzing the thermal performance of heat pipe flat plate solar collector with cross flow heat exchanger has been put forward and validated by comparisons with the experimental and numerical results in pre-existing literature. The proposed theoretical method can be used to analyze and discuss the influence of relevant parameters on the thermal performance of heat pipe flat plate solar collector.     

Experimental investigation of plastic finned-tube heat exchangers,with emphasis on material thermal conductivity

In this paper, two modified types of polypropylene (PP) with high thermal conductivity up to 2.3 W/m K and 16.5 W/m K are used to manufacture the finned-tube heat exchangers, which are prospected to be used in liquid desiccant air conditioning, heat recovery, water source heat pump, sea water desalination, etc. A third plastic heat exchanger is also manufactured with ordinary PP for validation and comparison. Experiments are carried out to determine the thermal performance of the plastic heat exchangers. It is found that the plastic finned-tube heat exchanger with thermal conductivity of 16.5 W/m K can achieve overall heat transfer coefficient of 34 W/m² K. The experimental results are compared with calculation and they agree well with each other. Finally, the effect of material thermal conductivity on heat exchanger thermal performance is studied in detail. The results show that there is a threshold value of material thermal conductivity. Below this value improving thermal conductivity can considerably improve the heat exchanger performance while over this value improving thermal conductivity contributes very little to performance enhancement. For the finned-tube heat exchanger designed in this paper, when the plastic thermal conductivity can reach over 15 W/m K, it can achieve more than 95% of the titanium heat exchanger performance and 84% of the aluminum or copper heat exchanger performance with the same dimension.     

Parametric study of gross flow maldistribution in a single-pass shell and tube heat exchanger in turbulent regime

Uniform distribution of flow in tube bundle of shell and tube heat exchangers is an arbitrary assumption in conventional heat exchanger design. Nevertheless, in practice, flow maldistribution may be an inevitable occurrence which may have severe impacts on thermal and mechanical performance of heat exchangers i.e. fouling. The present models for flow maldistribution in the tube-side deal only with the maximum possible velocity deviation. Other flow maldistribution models propose and recommend the use of a probability distribution, e.g. Gaussian distribution. None of these, nevertheless, estimate quantitatively the number of tubes that suffer from flow maldistribution. This study presents a mathematical model for predicting gross flow maldistribution in the tube-side of a single-pass shell and tube heat exchanger. It can quantitatively estimate the magnitude of flow maldistribution and the number of tubes which have been affected. The validation of the resultant model has been confirmed when compared with similar study using computational fluid dynamics (CFD).     

Analytical solution of conjugate heat transfer and optimum configurations of flat-plate heat exchangers with circular flow channels

An analytical solution is developed for conjugate heat transfer in a flat-plate heat exchanger with circular embedded channels. The analysis was carried out for fully-developed conditions in the circular tube and uniform heat flux at the plate boundary. The results are applicable to cooling channels that are 50 μm or more in diameter with a large length–diameter ratio. The thermal characteristics of the heat exchanger have been examined for a wide range of the relevant independent parameters and optimum designs for three different sets of constraints have been presented. It was found that the overall thermal resistance increases with the depth of the tube from the heated surface, as well as the spacing between the tubes. For a given combination of tubes’ depth and spacing, there is a certain tube diameter at which the thermal resistance attains a minimum value.     

Development of a modular zeolite-water heat pump

The working pair zeolite-water has very good characteristics for the heat pump application. It is non-poisonous, non-flammable and low-corrosive so that the use of a zeolite-water heat pump in the large field of domestic heating is very promising. The poor heat and mass transfer of the zeolite has to be considered by an appropriate design of the adsorber heat exchanger. Compact zeolite layers directly linked with the heat exchanger enable a high specific thermal output (thermal output related to the mass of zeolite) which is the main shortcoming of these machines. Additionally the coefficient of performance (COP) can be improved significantly by a modular design of the machine consisting of six to eight heat pump modules. Due to the periodical operating mode which is required by the zeolite-water pair the single module is built up in a simple way without any moving parts. The different modules, each of them operating in another phase of the sorption cycle, are connected in series by a heat transfer medium circuit so that a continuous thermal output together with high COP is achieved by this zeolite-water heat pump. First experimental investigations focus on the layout of the different components of the heat pump, e.g. the single module, the adsorber/desorber and the evaporator/condenser. The paper will present the design of these components as well as the design of the entire modular machine. Furthermore there will be a theoretical discussion of the COPs of the modular heat pump depending on the ambient temperature, on the number of modules and on the heating system. Received on 12 November 1998     

Monitoring the thermal efficiency of fouled heat exchangers: A simplified method

Fouling is a problem whether we are aware of it or not. In an industrial plant, it is important not only to be able to measure the buildup of unwanted deposits, but also to do it in the simplest and most economically possible way. This paper addresses the question of monitoring fouling in an oil refinery plant, where the high number of heat exchanger units and the variability of the feedstock charge pose additional problems in terms of the practicability of following the energetic performance of such equipment. In this case, the flow rates and quality of the fluids flowing through the heat exchangers do not usually correspond to the design conditions, because they change with time. Therefore, to assess the fouling level of the exchangers, the day-to-day measured thermal efficiency should not be compared with the efficiency predicted in the design calculations. The latter should be recalculated by introducing whenever necessary new values of flow rates, physical properties, and so forth, and by evaluating new heat transfer coefficients. However, the procedures are too time consuming to be applied frequently. The present work describes a simplified method for following heat exchanger performances, based on the assessment of the number of transfer units and thermal efficiencies, where the effects of changing the feedstock charge, particularly the flow rates of the fluids, are taken into account. The only data that need to be collected are the four inlet/outlet temperatures of the heat exchanger unit and one of the flow rates. Several heat exchanger units in an oil refinery were successfully monitored by means of this method, and it was found that the variations in the physical properties did not significantly affect the results obtained for the particular plant under study.     

Comparative study on performance of a zigzag printed circuit heat exchanger with various channel shapes and configurations

Comparative study has been performed with various channel cross-sectional shapes and channel configurations of a zigzag printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE), which has been considered as a heat exchanging device for the gas turbine based generation systems. Three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations and heat transfer equations are solved to analyze conjugate heat transfer in the zigzag channels. The shear stress transport model with a low Reynolds number wall treatment is used as a turbulence closure. The global Nusselt number, Colburn j-factor, effectiveness, and friction factor are used to estimate the thermal–hydraulic performance of the PCHE. Four different shapes of channel cross section (semicircular, rectangular, trapezoidal, and circular) and four different channel configurations are tested to determine their effects on thermal–hydraulic performance. The rectangular channel shows the best thermal performance but the worst hydraulic performance, while the circular channel shows the worst thermal performance. The Colburn j-factor and friction factor are found to be inversely proportional to the Reynolds number in cold channels, while the effectiveness and global Nusselt number are proportional to the Reynolds number.     

An analytical solution of the dynamics of a symmetrically operated parallel flow heat exchanger

An investigation of an analytical solution of the dynamics of a symmetrically operated parallel flow heat exchanger in the form of transfer matrix was performed. Perturbation method was used to linearize the usual non-linear model of such systems. A non-interactive controller to decouple the outputs and a controller to offset any expected disturbances in the boundary temperature was considered. A discrete model was established and found to predict the heat exchanger dynamics adequately. The results are acceptable and encouraging and the model has been found to be sufficient enough to achieve the objective of countering uncontrolled disturbance without requiring precise knowledge of process dynamics. The validity of the proposed control design is examined by comparing it with other models in the literature.     

Alternative approach in thermal analysis of plate heat exchanger

This paper presents alternative approach in heat transfer analysis of plate heat exchangers. In order to obtain heat transfer rate and effectiveness values of plate heat exchanger, neural network (NN) approach was used. Experimentally, system used in plate heat exchanger for heating and cooling applications was designed and constructed. Experimental data were used for training and testing network. The training and validation were performed with good accuracy. The correlation coefficient obtained when unknown data were applied to the networks was 0.9994 for heat transfer rate and 0.9976 for effectiveness, which is very satisfactory. Using the weights obtained from the trained network, a new formulation is presented for determination of heat transfer rate and effectiveness. This formulation can provide simplicity in thermal analysis of plate heat exchanger. The presented procedure can also help to heat exchanger designer and manufacturer.     

Experimental study on the performance of a novel structure for two-phase flow distribution in parallel vertical channels

Uniform flow distribution is critical to obtain high thermal performance in many heat and mass transfer devices. It especially plays an important role in a compact heat exchanger. In this paper, a two-phase flow distributor is proposed for the evaporator unit of the plate-fin heat exchanger to alleviate the phase maldistribution in the multiphase flow. Air and water mixture was adopted as two-phase medium and distributions into ten parallel channels were measured in detail. The results show that the proposed distributor can improve the two-phase flow distribution of the plate-fin heat exchanger.     

Sizing problem for a cross flow heat exchanger with wing-type vortex generator

In the present study, sizing of a single pass cross flow heat exchanger with unmixed fluid streams has been investigated. The heat exchanger is a cross flow heat exchanger. It has overall dimensions of 20 × 20 × 20 cm. Two the most common heat exchanger design problems are the rating and sizing problem. Sizing problems deal with designing an exchanger and determining its physical size to meet the specified heat duty, pressure drops and other considerations. It means the determination of the exchanger construction type, flow arrangement, heat transfer surface geometries and materials, and the physical sizes of an exchanger to meet specified heat transfer and pressure drop. In this study, the physical size (length, width, height, mass flow rates of both fluids and surface areas on each side of the exchanger) are determined. Inputs to the sizing problem are surface geometries, fluid mass flow rates, inlet and outlet fluid temperatures and pressure drop on each side. Dimensions of L _a , L _b , and L _c for the selected surfaces were investigated such that the design meets the heat duty and pressure drops on both sides exactly.     

High temperature heat exchanger studies for applications to gas turbines

Growing demand for environmentally friendly aero gas-turbine engines with lower emissions and improved specific fuel consumption can be met by incorporating heat exchangers into gas turbines. Relevant researches in such areas as the design of a heat exchanger matrix, materials selection, manufacturing technology, and optimization by a variety of researchers have been reviewed in this paper. Based on results reported in previous studies, potential heat exchanger designs for an aero gas turbine recuperator, intercooler, and cooling-air cooler are suggested.