Development of Heat Transfer Surface Area Enhancements: A Test Facility for New Heat Exchanger Designs

Hannes Fugmann, Paolo Di Lauro, Aniket Sawant and Lena Schnabel
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Hannes Fugmann: Fraunhofer ISE, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Heidenhofstr. 2, 79110 Freiburg, Germany
Paolo Di Lauro: Fraunhofer ISE, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Heidenhofstr. 2, 79110 Freiburg, Germany
Aniket Sawant: Fraunhofer ISE, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Heidenhofstr. 2, 79110 Freiburg, Germany
Lena Schnabel: Fraunhofer ISE, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Heidenhofstr. 2, 79110 Freiburg, Germany

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-17

Abstract: Enhancing the heat transfer surface by usage of cellular metal structures, such as foams or wire structures, might allow enlarging the surface area, increasing the heat transfer coefficients, decreasing the material utilization, and enabling the flexibility of different geometrical dimensions. However their manufacturing and assembling in a large heat exchanger for performance testing and optimizing can be costly. Therefore a test rig was constructed for experimental characterization of heat transfer surface area enhancements. Heat exchanger samples with dimensions in the centimeter range can be measured. The fluid flow and heat transfer features of a micro pin fin wire structure made from copper by soft-soldering were experimentally characterized under steady-state forced air convection. The results are compared to performance characteristics of louvered fins. Heat transfer coefficients of the pin fins are twice as high as for the louvered fins. The relative expanded uncertainty of the Nusselt number is ±7%.

Keywords: air-to-water heat exchanger; heat transfer; fluid dynamics; performance evaluation; heat transfer surface area enhancement; wire structure heat exchanger; cellular metal structure; pin fins (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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