Plate heat exchangers (PHEs) are gaining popularity in the industry due to their compactness and compatibility with a range of applications. Recent developments with respect to improved design and mechanical integrity have made them suitable for high pressure applications as well. Being compact in nature PHEs can perform the same heat duty with reduced refrigerant charge. Optimization of heat exchangers with respect to improved heat transfer enhancement with lowered pressure drop has always been a challenge to designers. Though, considerable experimental studies on evaporation heat transfer and associated pressure drop in PHEs are available but due to inherently complexity, all empirical or semi-empirical correlations generated by various researchers were developed for specific experimental conditions and represent limited experimental outputs. As such, there are rare studies focused on the applicability of these correlations. Two-phase heat transfer in PHEs is a function of various geometric, and thermal-hydraulic parameters. Thus it is critical to obtain generalized correlations that would take into account the effects of all major parameters. At the same time, it is important to evaluate performance of such correlations in comparison to existing performance correlations to highlight the accuracy.  This paper presents a consolidated critical analysis of the existing evaporation heat transfer and pressure drop correlations for PHEs elaborating the major deficiencies. The major goal of the study is to develop more generalized correlations to estimate thermal-hydraulic performance of PHEs during evaporation of several refrigerants for various plate geometries. A comprehensive procedure is provided for the development of such correlations and their validity has been established by comparison to existing knowledge in the field.


Development of Accurate and Easy-to-Use Thermal-Hydraulic Performance Correlations for Plate Heat Exchangers Under Evaporating Conditions

Division / Sponsors: 
Heat Transfer Division (HTD), Fluids Engineering Division (FED)

Heat Transfer Summer Conference
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/HT/HT2020/volume/83709

18th International Conference on Nanochannels, Microchannels, and Minichannels
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/ICNMM/ICNMM2020/volume/83693

Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/FEDSM/FEDSM2020/volume/83716

HT-ICNMM2020 - Virtual Conference, SHTC - Virtual Conference, FEDSM2020 - Virtual Conference

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