CHARACTERIZATION OF HEAT TRANSFER AND PRESSURE DROP OF NORMAL FLOW HEAT EXCHANGERS IN COUNTER FLOW CONFIGURATION

Abstract

In today's times, successful technology advancement lies in making systems that are highly compact, offer superior energy efficiency, while sustainable and cost effective . There is interest in developing small heat exchangers having better flow distribution control rather than bulky heat exchangers which are energy intensive. Microchannels and microreactors controlled by microprocessors are slowly taking over energy conversion, transportation and process industry. The nature inspired - Fractal arrangement of manifold-microchannels has the potential to provide enormous heat transfer capabilities at an attractive coefficient of performance. However majority of such fractal flow manifolds are very short and operate with short counterpart microchannel. They have not been completely adopted for counter flow configuration required by majority of the industrial processes. The work covered under this thesis is focused on adopting of high performance fractal microchannel arrangement to counter flow configuration heat exchangers that are required by industrial processes. Two single phase solution heat exchangers were developed using this approach. The solution heat exchanger is an essential component in absorption refrigeration cycle to convert waste heat into cooling. The study also utilized the novel additive manufacturing process of 3D printing to develop a tubular manifold in order to promote the fractal normal flow on tubular surfaces. The heat exchangers developed as a part of this thesis show enhancement in the overall performance and demonstrate high potential of the proposed technology.