Air to Air Heat Exchanger Mimicked from the Directional Passive Water Transport Featured by the Skin Morphology of Phrynosoma Cornutum

Abstract

A biomimetic approach is proposed to improve the performance of an intercooler using only the passive water transport featured by the lizard species Phrynosoma Cornutum for racing applications. The lizard is able to transport in a preferred direction, water over its integument whilst consuming no energy to do so. That feature is used in the external surface of the intercooler and an evaporation rate is desired. The model started with the air conditions after the turbo charger stage, Then, the convection of air in the heat exchanger is modelled by the boundary layer theory which is applicable for the scale used justified by the Péclet number value, for both the heat and mass transfer. The convection heat transfer was satisfactory modelled and the values reached inside the expected values for the optimal 2 mm wall thickness selected to demonstrate the enhancement due to the mass transfer and a surface temperature of 62.02 °C was stabilized for the conditions selected under a few iterations. According to the mass convection theory a mathematical model of the heat exchange was made and for the heat lost there exist a drawback due to a deviation from real values due to the highly turbulent flow under the conditions selected and the very small value of the Schmidt number obtained in the literature and pooled to the lack of a proper equation to compute the Sherwood number, which was not found and modelled outside the Schmidt number range. To solve this, a correction factor of the water evaporation is introduced which assumes that not all the water from the channels evaporates and some part is taken by the turbulent air as water droplets, but it needs further validation by real experiments, which is expected to be the next stage of the project.