Performance evaluation of louvered fin compact heat exchangers with vortex generators

Every day large amounts of heat are transferred in many industrial and domestic processes. This heat transfer takes place in a heat exchanger. Any energy savings in heat transfer processes have a significant impact on the fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. More energy efficient heat exchangers help to meet the 20-20-20 climate and energy targets of the European Union. In many applications air is one of the working fluids (e.g. coolers in compressed air systems, heat pumps, air conditioning devices, domestic heating, etc.). When heat is exchanged with air, the main thermal resistance is located at the air side of the heat exchanger. To increase the heat transfer rate, the heat transfer surface area is enlarged by adding fins to the air side of the heat exchanger. When a high compactness is needed, complex interrupted fin surfaces are used. A typical example is the louvered fin design. The main disadvantage of the louvered fins is the high pressure drop. Delta winglets mounted on a heat transfer surface generate vortices which cause an intense mixing of the flow and thin the thermal boundary layers. In contrast to louvered fins, they enhance the heat transfer with a relatively low penalty in pressure drop. The objective of this doctoral work is to evaluate if the thermal hydraulic performance of a louvered fin heat exchanger with round tubes in a staggered layout can be improved by adding delta winglets to the fins. Such compound designs form the next generation of heat exchangers. Both experiments (flow visualizations in a water tunnel and heat transfer and pressure drop measurements in a wind tunnel) and simulations (Computational Fluid Dynamics - CFD) were performed. The louvers affect the main flow, while the delta winglets reduce the wake regions downstream of the tubes. The generated vortices cause three important mechanisms of heat transfer enhancement: a better mixing, a reduction of the thermal boundary layer thickness and a delay of the flow separation from the tube surface. Further, it was found that the vortices do not extend far downstream as they are destroyed by the deflected flow in the downstream louver bank. The compound heat exchanger has a better thermal hydraulic performance than when only vortex generators or only louvers are used. It is shown that for the same pumping power and heat duty, the compound heat exchanger is smaller in volume. Consequently, less space is required, the material cost is lower and (often also) the operational cost is reduced. The combination of louvered fins and vortex generators is mainly interesting for low Reynolds applications, such as HVAC&R applications or in compressed air systems. A well-considered location and geometry of the vortex generators are essential for an improved performance of the heat exchanger

On the comparison between compound louvered-vortex generator fins and X-shaped louvered fins

A recent evolution in heat exchanger design is the use of compound designs. One of the designs under study is a combination between a louvered fin and vortex generators. Several possible placements of the vortex generators are studied. These compound designs are compared with the X-shaped louvered fin, which maximizes the louvered area. It is shown that the X-shaped louvered fin exhibits the same heat transfer enhancement mechanism as the compound design, with respect to the rectangular louvered fin. The X-shaped louvered fin outperforms all of the compound designs

Experimental investigation at sub- and supercritical conditions of a helical coil heat exchanger particularly designed for a small-scale solar ORC

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On the applicability of empirical heat transfer models for hydrogen combustion engines

Hydrogen-fuelled internal combustion engines are being investigated as an alternative for current drive trains because they have a high efficiency, near-zero noxious and zero tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions. A thermodynamic model of the engine cycle would enable a cheap and fast optimization of engine settings for operation on hydrogen, facilitating the development of these engines. The accuracy of the heat transfer submodel within the thermodynamic model is important to simulate accurately the emissions of oxides of nitrogen which are influenced by the maximum gas temperature. These emissions can occur in hydrogen internal combustion engines at high loads and they are an important constraint for power and efficiency optimization. The most common heat transfer models in engine research are those from Annand and Woschni. These models are developed for fossil fuels, which have different combustion properties. Therefore, they need to be evaluated for hydrogen. We have measured the heat flux and the wall temperature in an engine that can run on hydrogen and methane. This paper describes an evaluation of the models of Annand and Woschni, using those heat flux measurements and assesses if the models capture the effect of changing combustion and fuel properties. The models fail on all the tests, so they need to be improved to accurately model the heat transfer generated by hydrogen combustion

Investigation of the influence of engine settings on the heat flux in a hydrogen- and methane-fueled spark ignition engine

Hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines are a possible solution to make transportation more ecological. Only emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) occur at high loads, being a constraint for power and efficiency optimization. A thermodynamic model of the engine cycle enables a cheap and fast optimization of engine settings. It needs to accurately predict the heat transfer in the engine because the NOx emissions are influenced by the maximum gas temperature. However, the existing engine heat transfer models in the literature are developed for fossil fuels and they have been cited to be inaccurate for hydrogen. We have measured the heat transfer inside a spark ignited engine with a thermopile to investigate the heat transfer process of hydrogen and to find the differences with a fossil fuel. This paper describes the effects of the compression ratio, ignition timing and mixture richness on the heat transfer process, comparing hydrogen with methane. A convection coefficient is used to separate the effect of the temperature difference between the gas and the wall from the influence of the gas movement and combustion. The paper shows that the convection coefficient gives more insight in the heat transfer process in a combustion engine despite the assumptions involved in its definition. The comparison between hydrogen and methane demonstrates, in contrast to what is believed, that the heat loss of hydrogen can be lower

Thermo-economic optimization of organic rankine cycle CHP with low temperature waste heat

Combined heat and power (CHP) systems are able to decrease the total energy use of primary energy sources. In the CHP system studied, internal combustion engines produce electricity and the hot engine cooling water is used for building heating. However, there is still waste heat left which can be fed to an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) to produce electricity. The objective of this study is to develop a methodology to design an economically optimal ORC system, taking into account the variable load for heating and the change in ambient temperature during a year. Also the auxiliary equipment such as pumps and fans are considered. A thermodynamic steady-state part-load model is developed to simulate the changing behaviour hour-by-hour of the complete system in different operating conditions. The ORC efficiency varies strongly over a year. The methodology allows selecting the optimal size of the heat exchangers (condenser and evaporator), the optimal mass flow rates and the maximal power of fans and pumps needed for the considered application