On Application of the Second Law to Heat Exchangers

摘要

The application of entropy minimization to heat exchangers leads to inconsistent results and does not yield much useful design information. In this paper it is shown that in applying the second law to heat exchangers, three assumptions are typically made that are incorrect and that once they are removed, useful and consistent results are obtained from the second law. In addition, a new performance measure, entropy flux is introduced and it is shown that the objective in heat exchanger design should be the maximization of the entropy flux.