Experimental Study on Air Cooling via a Multiport Mesochannel Cross-Flow Heat Exchanger

Researchers are moving forward to provide energy efficient, compact and inexpensive heat exchangers. Main focus is being deployed to the heat exchangers comprising narrow size flow channels such as mesochannels and microchannels for their augmented heat transfer characteristics, compactness and energy efficiency compared to conventional heat exchangers with the same heat exchange duty. Air to water cross-flow heat exchangers are encountered in many engineering applications. While numerous investigations were performed to characterize the heat transfer and fluid flow in mesochannels and microchannels, the literatures examining the air side heat transfer and flow behaviors in the cross-flow mesochannel heat exchangers are inadequate. In the current study air side heat transfer and flow characteristics of cross-flow cooling of air through a multiport slab mesochannel heat exchanger were investigated experimentally. The major components of experimental setup are the closed loop integrated thermal wind tunnel, liquid circulation network with heat add or removal system arrangement, sets of measuring instruments, data acquisition system, and multiport slab mesochannel heat exchanger as the test specimen. The multiport slab mesochannel heat exchanger consists of 15 finned aluminum slabs with 304 mm × 304 mm size frontal area and 100 mm flow length across the direction of air flow. Each slab contains 68 flow channels of 1mm circular diameter. Cold deionized (DI) water at a constant mass flow rate (0.0196 kg/s) was forced to flow through the mesochannels whereas the hot air at different velocities was allowed to pass through the finned passages of the heat exchanger core in cross-flow orientation. The inlet air temperature was changed in three levels (28°C, 33°C and 38°C) while maintaining a constant inlet water temperature of 8° C. The air velocity was varied in four steps (3.5m/s, 5.5m/s, 7.5m/s, and 9.5 m/s) at each temperature level. In the present study heat transfer and fluid flow key parameters such as heat transfer rate (Q˙), number of transfer units (NTU), effectiveness (ε), overall thermal resistance (R_total), and the air side Nusselt number (Nu_a) as well as Reynolds number (Re_a) were examined in the region of the air side Reynolds number at the range of 972–2758, with a constant water side Reynolds number of 135. Heat balance performance of the experiment was found to be 4% for all operating conditions. The air side thermal resistance was found to be dominating over the overall thermal resistance ranging from 85% to 91% of the overall thermal resistance. The effect of air side Reynolds number on air side Nusselt number was examined and a general correlation of Nusselt number with Reynolds number was obtained as Nu_a = 0.3972(Re_a)^0.3766. The Nusselt number value was found to be higher in comparison with other research works for the corresponding Reynolds number range. The multiport mesochannel flat slab has offered uniform temperature distribution into the core. This uniform temperature distribution leads to higher heat transfer over standalone inline flow tube bank.