Diffusion-Welded Microchannel Heat Exchanger for Industrial Processes

Author(s):  
Piyush Sabharwall ◽  
Denis E. Clark ◽  
Ronald E. Mizia ◽  
Michael V. Glazoff ◽  
Michael G. McKellar

The goal of next generation reactors is to increase energy efficiency in the production of electricity and provide high-temperature heat for industrial processes. The efficient transfer of energy for industrial applications depends on the ability to incorporate effective heat exchangers between the nuclear heat transport system and the industrial process. The need for efficiency, compactness, and safety challenge the boundaries of existing heat exchanger technology. Various studies have been performed in attempts to update the secondary heat exchanger that is downstream of the primary heat exchanger, mostly because its performance is strongly tied to the ability to employ more efficient industrial processes. Modern compact heat exchangers can provide high compactness, a measure of the ratio of surface area-to-volume of a heat exchange. The microchannel heat exchanger studied here is a plate-type, robust heat exchanger that combines compactness, low pressure drop, high effectiveness, and the ability to operate with a very large pressure differential between hot and cold sides. The plates are etched and thereafter joined by diffusion welding, resulting in extremely strong all-metal heat exchanger cores. After bonding, any number of core blocks can be welded together to provide the required flow capacity. This study explores the microchannel heat exchanger and draws conclusions about diffusion welding/bonding for joining heat exchanger plates, with both experimental and computational modeling, along with existing challenges and gaps. Also, presented is a thermal design method for determining overall design specifications for a microchannel printed circuit heat exchanger for both supercritical (24 MPa) and subcritical (17 MPa) Rankine power cycles.

Author(s):  
Ali Siahpush ◽  
Piyush Sabharwall

This study presents the material challenges associated with Advanced Reactor Concepts (ARC) such as the Advanced High Temperature Reactor (AHTR). ARCs are the next generation concepts focusing on power production and providing thermal energy for industrial applications. The efficient transfer of energy for industrial applications depends on the ability to incorporate cost-effective heat exchangers between the nuclear heat transport system and industrial process heat transport system. The heat exchanger required for AHTR is subjected to a unique set of conditions that introduce several design challenges not encountered in standard heat exchangers. The corrosive molten salts, especially at higher temperatures, require materials throughout the system to avoid corrosion, and adverse high-temperature effects, such as creep. Given the very high steam generator pressure of the supercritical steam cycle, it is anticipated that water tube and molten salt shell steam generators heat exchanger will be used. In this paper, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Section III and Section VIII requirements (acceptance criteria) are discussed. Also, the ASME material acceptance criteria (ASME Section II, Part D) for high temperature environments are presented. Finally, lack of ASME acceptance criteria for thermal design and analysis are discussed with potential benefit.


1977 ◽  
Vol 99 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Bejan

The thermal design of counterflow heat exchangers for gas-to-gas applications is based on the thermodynamic irreversibility rate or useful power no longer available as a result of heat exchanger frictional pressure drops and stream-to-stream temperature differences. The irreversibility (entropy production) concept establishes a direct relationship between the heat exchanger design parameters and the useful power wasted due to heat exchanger nonideality. The paper presents a heat exchanger design method for fixed or for minimum irreversibility (number of entropy generation units NS). In contrast with traditional design procedures, the amount of heat transferred between streams and the pumping power for each side become outputs of the NS design approach. To illustrate the use of this method, the paper develops the design of regenerative heat exchangers with minimum heat transfer surface and with fixed irreversibility NS.


Heat exchangers are prominent industrial applications where engineering science of heat transfer and Mass transfer occurs. It is a contrivance where transfer of energy occurs to get output in the form of energy transfer. This paper aims at finding a solution to improve the thermal performance in a heat exchanger by using passive method techniques. This experimental and numerical analysis deals with finding the temperature outlets of cold and hot fluid for different mass flow rates and also pressure drop in the tube and the annular side by adding an elliptical leaf strip in the pipe at various angles. The single elliptical leaf used in experiment has major to minor axes ratios as 2:1 and distance of 50 mm between two leaves are arranged at different angular orientations from 0 0 to 1800 with 100 intervals. Since it’s not possible to find the heat transfer rates and pressure drops at every orientation of elliptical leaf so a generalized regression neural network (GRNN) prediction tool is used to get outputs with given inputs to avoid experimentation. GRNN is a statistical method of determining the relationship between dependent and independent variables. The values obtained from experimentation and GRNN nearly had precise values to each other. This analysis is a small step in regard with encomiastic approach for enhancement in performance of heat exchangers


Author(s):  
Milnes P. David ◽  
Amy Marconnet ◽  
Kenneth E. Goodson

Two-phase microfluidic cooling has the potential to achieve low thermal resistances with relatively small pumping power requirements compared to single-phase heat exchanger technology. Two-phase cooling systems face practical challenges however, due to the instabilities, large pressure drop, and dry-out potential associated with the vapor phase. Our past work demonstrated that a novel vapor-venting membrane attached to a silicon microchannel heat exchanger can reduce the pressure drop for two-phase convection. This work develops two different types of vapor-venting copper heat exchangers with integrated hydrophobic PTFE membranes and attached thermocouples to quantify the thermal resistance and pressure-drop improvement over a non-venting control. The first type of heat exchanger, consisting of a PTFE phase separation membrane and a 170 micron thick carbon-fiber support membrane, shows no improvement in the thermal resistance and pressure drop. The results suggest that condensation and leakage into the carbon-fiber membrane suppresses venting and results in poor device performance. The second type of heat exchanger, which evacuates any liquid water on the vapor side of the PTFE membrane using 200 ml/min of air, reduces the thermal resistance by almost 35% in the single-phase regime in comparison. This work shows that water management, mechanical and surface properties of the membrane as well as its attachment and support within the heat exchanger are all key elements of the design of vapor-venting heat exchangers.


Author(s):  
Soheil Soleimanikutanaei ◽  
Cheng-Xian Lin ◽  
Dexin Wang

Heat and water recovery using Transport Membrane Condenser (TMC) based heat exchangers is a promising technology in power generation industry. In this type of innovative heat exchangers the tube walls are made of a nano-porous material and have a high membrane selectivity which is able to extract condensate water from the flue gas in the presence of the other non-condensable gases such as CO2, O2 and N2. Considering the fact that for industrial applications, a matrix of TMC heat exchangers with several TMC modulus in the cross section or along the flow direction is necessary. Numerical simulation of multi-stage TMC heat exchanger units is of a great importance in terms of design, performance evaluation and optimization. In this work, performance of a two-stage TMC heat exchanger unit has been studied numerically using a multi-species transport model. In order to investigate the performance of the two-stage TMC heat exchanger unit, parametric study on the effect of transversal and longitudinal pitches in terms of heat transfer, pressure drop and condensation rate inside the heat exchangers have been carried out. The results indicate that the heat transfer and condensation rates both increase by reducing TMC tube pitches in the second stage and increasing the number of TMC tube pitches in the first stage of the units.


Author(s):  
T. Q. Ma ◽  
K. T. Ooi ◽  
T. N. Wong

This paper presents simulation results on the geometrical optimization design of bare tube heat exchangers. By linking a mathematical model with an optimization alogorithm, it is possible to predict which combination of five geometrical variables would produce a given coil capacity of a heat exchanger, the minimum core volume size operating at the minimum pressure drop. A constrained multivariable direct search technique is used in which the five geometrical variables and a mixture of five explicit and implicit constraints are accommodated. Using this design method, three typical sizes of bare tube optimization cases have been studied. The simulation results predict significant performance improvements for heat exchanger design. The range of tube outer diameter in this optimization study is from 4.9 to 9.0 mm.


Author(s):  
B. Mathew ◽  
H. Hegab

In this paper the effect of axial heat conduction on the thermal performance of a microchannel heat exchanger with non-adiabatic end walls is studied. The two ends of the wall separating the coolant are assumed to be subjected to boundary condition of the first kind. As the end walls are not insulated heat transfer between the microchannel heat exchanger and its surroundings occur. Analytical equations have been formulated for predicting the axial temperature of the coolants and the wall as well as for determining the effectiveness of both fluids. The effectiveness of the fluids has been found to depend on the NTU, axial heat conduction parameter and end wall temperatures. The heat transfer through the end walls have been expressed in nondimensional terms. The nondimensional heat transfer from both ends of the wall also depends on the axial heat conduction parameter and temperature gradient at the end walls. A new parameter, performance factor, has been proposed for comparing the variation in effectiveness due to axial heat conduction coupled with heat transfer with the effectiveness without axial heat conduction. The effectiveness of both the hot and cold fluid for several cases of end wall temperatures and axial heat conduction parameter are analyzed in this paper for better understanding of heat transfer dynamics of microchannel heat exchangers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 945 (1) ◽  
pp. 012058
Author(s):  
Sayshar Ram Nair ◽  
Cheen Sean Oon ◽  
Ming Kwang Tan ◽  
S.N. Kazi

Abstract Heat exchangers are important equipment with various industrial applications such as power plants, HVAC industry and chemical industries. Various fluids that are used as working fluid in the heat exchangers such as water, oil, and ethylene glycol. Researchers have conducted various studies and investigations to improve the heat exchanger be it from material or heat transfer point of view. There have been attempts to create mixtures with solid particles suspended. This invention had some drawbacks since the pressure drop was compromised, on top of the occurrence of sedimentation or even erosion, which incurs higher maintenance costs. A new class of colloidal suspension fluid that met the demands and characteristics of a heat exchanger was then created. This novel colloidal suspension mixture was then and now addressed as “nanofluid”. In this study, the usage of functionalized graphene nanoplatelet (GNP) nanofluids will be studied for its thermal conductivity within an annular conduit with angled fins, which encourage swirling flows. The simulation results for the chosen GNP nanofluid concentrations have shown an enhancement in thermal conductivity and heat transfer coefficient compared to the corresponding base fluid thermal properties. The data from this research is useful in industrial applications which involve heat exchangers with finned tubes.


2005 ◽  
Vol 51 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 293-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Drioli ◽  
G. Di Profio ◽  
E. Curcio

Membrane science and technology are recognized today as powerful tools in resolving some important global problems, and developing newer industrial processes, needed from the imperative of sustainable industrial growth. In seawater desalination, for resolving the dramatic increase of freshwater demand in many regions of the world, membrane unitary operations or the combination of some of them in integrated systems are already a real means for producing water from the sea, at lower costs and minimum environmental impact, with a very interesting prospective in particular for poor economy countries. However, membranes are used or are becoming used in some important industrial fields, for developing more efficient productive cycles, with reduced waste of raw-material, reducing the polluting charge by controlling byproduct generation, and reducing overall costs. In the present paper, other than for seawater desalination applications, some industrial applications where membrane technology has led already to match the goal of process intensification are discussed.


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