An Investigation of Heat Transfer on Microchannel Heat Exchanger Flow Arrangement with Gas Heating

Abstract:

The present study investigates the effect of flow arrangement on heat transfer characteristics in two-phase microchannel heat exchangers (MCHEs) with gas heating. The microchannel heat exchangers are developed to utilize the exhaust heat from a high-temperature gas product of a methanol reformer (a part of a reformed methanol fuel cell). Co-and counter-current flow types of MCHE are tested. Working fluids in the hot and cold sides are helium and liquid methanol, respectively. For both single-phase flow regions, the experimental results indicate that the actual effectiveness of the counter-current MCHE is higher than that of the co-current MCHE. Both of the actual effectiveness of co-and counter-current MCHEs significantly increases with an increase of cold side mass flux. Moreover, the actual effectiveness for both types of MCHE is less relationship to the hot-side thermal power in single-phase zone. The highest actual effectiveness is about 0.6 and 0.72 for co-and counter-current MCHEs, respectively.

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volume 145)
• Pages: 262-266
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.145.262
• Online since: December 2011
• Authors: Tsung Lin Liu, Ben Ran Fu, Chin Pan
• Keywords: Evaporator, Micro Heat Exchanger, Micro-Channel

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