Advancing Fuel Cells Technology via Analogous Heat Exchanger Design Principles

Author(s):  
Comas Haynes ◽  
Vaughn Melbourne ◽  
William Rooker

Fuel cells and heat exchangers have numerous similarities. Both technologies are used to produce an “energy-in-transit.” Heat exchangers foster thermal transport (heat) as a result of thermal potential differences between streams; fuel cells foster charge transport across electrodes (current leading to power) as a result of electrochemical/electric potential differences between the reactant streams and fuel cell electrodes. Additional analogs include series resistance formulations, active regions for transport phenomena and pertinent capacity rates. These similarities have motivated the extension of heat exchanger design philosophies to fuel cells development. Pilot simulations have been done wherein solid oxide fuel cell geometries and process settings are being optimized via electrochemical pinch points, electroactive area optimization (patterned after optimal UA allocation within heat exchangers), and electrode “fins” for diminished polarization. The prevailing theme has been to bridge methodologies from the mature field of heat exchanger design to improve fuel cell design practices.

Author(s):  
Comas Haynes ◽  
William Rooker ◽  
Vaughn Melbourne ◽  
Jeffery Jones

Fuel cells and heat exchangers have numerous similarities. Both technologies are used to produce an “energy-in-transit.” Heat exchangers foster thermal transport (heat) as a result of thermal potential differences between streams; fuel cells foster charge transport across electrodes (current leading to power) as a result of electrochemical/electric potential differences between the reactant streams and fuel cell electrodes. Additional analogs include series resistance formulations, active regions for transport phenomena and pertinent capacity rates. These similarities have motivated the extension of heat exchanger design philosophies to fuel cells development. Pilot simulations have been done wherein solid oxide fuel cell geometries and process settings are being optimized via electrochemical pinch points, electroactive area optimization (patterned after optimal area allocation within heat exchangers), electrode “fins” for diminished polarization, and electrochemical multi-staging (motivated by heat exchanger network concepts). The prevailing theme has been to bridge methodologies from the mature field of heat exchanger design to improve fuel cell design practices.


1992 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Osweiller

For about 40 years most tubesheet exchangers have been designed according to the standards of TEMA. Partly due to their simplicity, these rules do not assure a safe heat-exchanger design in all cases. This is the main reason why new tubesheet design rules were developed in 1981 in France for the French pressure vessel code CODAP. For fixed tubesheet heat exchangers, the new rules account for the “elastic rotational restraint” of the shell and channel at the outer edge of the tubesheet, as proposed in 1959 by Galletly. For floating-head and U-tube heat exchangers, the approach developed by Gardner in 1969 was selected with some modifications. In both cases, the tubesheet is replaced by an equivalent solid plate with adequate effective elastic constants, and the tube bundle is simulated by an elastic foundation. The elastic restraint at the edge of the tubesheet due the shell and channel is accounted for in different ways in the two types of heat exchangers. The purpose of the paper is to present the main basis of these rules and to compare them to TEMA rules.


Author(s):  
Venkata Rajesh Saranam ◽  
Peter Carter ◽  
Kyle Rozman ◽  
Ömer Dogan ◽  
Brian K. Paul

Abstract Hybrid compact heat exchangers (HCHEs) are a potential source of innovation for intermediate heat exchangers in nuclear industry, with HCHEs being designed for Gen-IV nuclear power applications. Compact heat exchangers are commonly fabricated using diffusion bonding, which can provide challenges for HCHEs due to resultant non-uniform stress distributions across hybrid structures during bonding, leading to variations in joint properties that can compromise performance and safety. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate a heuristic for determining whether a feasible set of diffusion bonding conditions exist for producing HCHE designs capable of meeting regulatory requirements under nuclear boiler and pressure vessel codes. A diffusion bonding model for predicting pore elimination and structural analyses are used to inform the heuristic and a heat exchanger design for 316 stainless steel is used to evaluate the efficacy of the heuristic to develop acceptable diffusion bonding parameters. A set of diffusion bonding conditions were identified and validated experimentally by producing various test coupons for evaluating bond strength, ductility, porosity, grain size, creep rupture, creep fatigue and channel deviation. A five-layer hybrid compact heat exchanger structure was fabricated and tensile tested demonstrating that the bonding parameters satisfy all criteria in this paper for diffusion bonding HCHEs with application to the nuclear industry.


Author(s):  
Michel De Paepe ◽  
Christophe T’Joen ◽  
Arnold Janssens ◽  
Marijke Steeman

Earth-air heat exchangers are often used for (pre)heating or (pre)cooling of ventilation air in low energy or passive house standard buildings. Several studies have been published in the passed about the performance of these earth-air heat exchangers [1–8]. Often this is done in relation to the building energy use. Several software codes are available with which the behaviour of the earth-air heat exchanger can be simulated. De Paepe and Janssens published a simplified design methodology for earth-air heat exchangers, based on thermal to hydraulic performance optimisation [7]. Through dynamic simulations and measurements it was shown that the methodology is quite conservative [9–10]. Hollmu¨ller added an earth-air heat exchanger model to TRNSYS [11]. In stead of using earth-air heat exchangers, earth-water heat exchangers are now getting more attention. In this system the ventilation air is indirectly cooled/heated with the water flow in a fin-tube heat exchanger in the inlet of the ventilation channel. The water-glycol mixture transfers heat with the earth by flowing through e.g. a polyethylene tube. In the second part of this paper a design methodology is first derived and then applied to this type of system.


1984 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-285
Author(s):  
F. R. Weiner

This paper describes the analysis and design of the five kinds of heat exchangers used in the thermal storage subsystem of the 10 MWe Solar Central Receiver Pilot Plant, now becoming more known as “Solar One.” The paper discusses the practices and standards used in the designs of the heat exchangers, lists the heat exchanger design requirements, and discusses the process conditions. The design assumptions and constraints, the geometrical considerations, and the tradeoff studies that were conducted to optimize the designs are also discussed. A description of each heat exchanger reveals the final design solution. Novel and unique features of a power plant that must operate on a daily sun-cycle are identified.


Author(s):  
Torsten Berning

This paper describes the development of a numerical algorithm and a graphical method that can be employed in order to determine the overall heat transfer coefficient inside heat exchangers. The method is based on an energy balance and utilizes the spreadsheet application software Microsoft Excel™. The application is demonstrated in an example for designing a single pass shell and tube heat exchanger that was developed in the Department of Materials Technology of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) where water vapor is superheated by a secondary oil cycle. This approach can be used to reduce the number of hardware iterations in heat exchanger design.


2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 439-449
Author(s):  
Nikola Zlatkovic ◽  
Divna Majstorovic ◽  
Mirjana Kijevcanin ◽  
Emila Zivkovic

Plate heat exchanger is a type of heat exchanger that uses corrugated metal plates to transfer heat between two fluids. The plate corrugations are designed to achieve turbulence across the entire heat transfer area thus producing the highest possible heat transfer coefficients while allowing close temperature approaches. Subsequently, this leads to a smaller heat transfer area, smaller units and in some cases, fewer heat exchangers. In this work, an application for thermal and hydraulic computations of plate heat exchangers had been developed using Sharp Develop, an open source programming platform. During the development process, several literature methods and correlations for calculation of heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop in a plate heat exchanger have been tested and the selected four methods: Martin, VDI, Kumar and Coulson and Richardson have been incorporated into the software. The structure of the software is visually presented through several windows: a window for inserting input data, windows for showing the results of computation by each of the methods, a window for showing comparative analysis of the most important computation results obtained by all of the used methods and a help window for demonstrating the working principle of plate heat exchanger.


Author(s):  
Seon-hwa Kim ◽  
Jae-jun Lee ◽  
Young-min Oh ◽  
Sang-hoon Lee ◽  
Jae-sik Kim

The MCFC system of BOP (Balance of Plant) is contained various mechanical equipments. One of the equipments of the heat exchangers is important component for efficiency and cost. In MCFC system, several heat exchangers are used according to the application. Most typical heat exchanger is the humidifier in BOP for MCFC, which is named for the humidifier because it is to preheat the fuel and water so that a reactor will convert some of the incoming fuel to hydrogen. Then, hot side fluid service is used the exhausted gas from the fuel cell and cold side fluid service is the fuel and water. The operation temperature range is about 25∼500 Celsius Degree.[1] This heat exchanger has the problems of multiphase fluid and phase change heat transfer. So it is necessary to analyze the heat transfer characteristics and to propose the reasonable design methodology for the humidifier. In this study, the thermal characteristic for the humidifier is estimated by using commercial tool of heat exchanger design, rating and simulation. Also this study presents the results for test facility of fabrication and for testing.


1983 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 560-567
Author(s):  
Karel Smrček ◽  
Olga Marholová ◽  
Karel Micka

Spontaneous penetration of hydrogen or oxygen through porous Teflon membranes into water or KOH solution was studied by a new method based on the measurement of the minimum gas overpressure necessary for the penetration at various temperatures. The results were compared with measurements on hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells and are in qualitative agreement with theoretical studies. The penetration of gases into the electrolyte can be prevented by their humidification before introducing them into the cells.


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