Engineering

Distributor

Heat transfer

Materials science

Heat exchanger

Plate heat exchanger

Mechanical engineering

Physics

Pressure drop

Composite material

Inlet

Mechanics

Micro heat exchanger

Plate fin heat exchanger

Applied Thermal Engineering

The influence of inlet placement and distributor geometry on the steady-state efficiency and pressure drop of cryogenic plate-fin heat exchangers (PFHEs) is studied using a three-dimensional simulation model. The simulation model employs a porous media approach to combine computational fluid dynamics with well-established correlations for heat transfer and pressure drop in fin materials. An isothermal study is conducted for comparison of six different distributor geometries. The selection of a favorable design depends on a trade-off between heat transfer and allowable pressure drop of a specific task but the presented results can serve as a guideline. Furthermore, two different configurations of a 6-stream PFHE are compared to an idealized, pseudo one-dimensional design. Both feasible designs lead to a significant increase in pressure drop and the thermal efficiency of the feasible designs differs by 5 percentage points. This highlights the necessity of considering the inlet- and distributor configuration in the design of a cryogenic PFHE.

Influence of inlet configuration and distributor geometry on the performance of cryogenic plate-fin heat exchangers