A review on CFD analysis of multiport minichannel heat exchanger using water as a working fluid

Mechanical Engineering

In the conventional heat exchangers, pipes are larger in size which makes heat exchanger bulky. But in some typical applications such as closed loop gas turbine heat exchangers, cryogenic applications, heat exchangers used in PWR power plants, nuclear submarines, etc., size and weight are critical design constraints on the heat exchanger. Also for high pressure applications tubes are subjected to high bending stresses. To overcome these difficulties, compact heat exchangers can be employed. Mini channels heat exchanger is a type of compact heat exchanger in which mini channels are machined on metal plates and then such plates are bonded together. Such an arrangement provides high strength so that it can be used for high pressure applications. It has been observed that in mini channels, convective heat transfer coefficient is more than the tubes used in conventional heat exchangers. Hence, the length for same heat transfer is greatly reduced which results in reduced overall size and weight of the heat exchanger. Electronic device are in heavy demand for computer processor applications and generate large amount of heat. These high power device can be cooled off very effectively by either liquid or gas coolant flowing through micro or mini channels. Continuous research work is ongoing for developing high speed processor which generate high amount of heat. Cooling of such particular systems requires high amount of mass flow rate and compactness is also required. This compact heat exchanger can be used for cooling purpose of electronics device like silicon chip which would be used for microprocessor.

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