CFD Simulation of Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop in Compact Brazed Plate Heat Exchangers

摘要

In this paper, the thermal and hydraulic characteristics of corrugated fluid channels of compact brazed plate heat exchangers (BPHE) are investigated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations using the commercial CFD software ANSYS CFX 14.0 The influence of geometry parameters of the corrugated pattern such as chevron angle and corrugation pitch on the BPHE performance is investigated on small fluid section geometries. The influence of various types of wall heat transfer boundary conditions on the simulation results is also studied. An entire fluid channel is simulated using various turbulence models in the Reynolds number range of 300 to 3000. The CFD predictions are also validated using data obtained from laboratory experiments. The simulations of the entire fluid channel underpredict heat transfer and pressure drop by 20-30% and 10-35%, respectively. The results from the small fluid sections suggest that the CFD simulations can be used as a reasonably effective tool in determining the relative performance variation of various plate patterns.