Application of Ceramic Lattice Structures to Design Compact, High Temperature Heat Exchangers: Material and Architecture Selection.

Marco Pelanconi,Simone Zavattoni,Edoardo Arrivabeni,Riccardo Puragliesi,Alberto Ortona,Maurizio Barbato,Sandro Gianella,Luca Ferrari,Luca Cornolti

doi:10.3390/ma14123225

Abstract

In this work, we report the design of ceramic lattices produced via additive manufacturing (AM) used to improve the overall performances of compact, high temperature heat exchangers (HXs). The lattice architecture was designed using a Kelvin cell, which provided the best compromise among effective thermal conductivity, specific surface area, dispersion coefficient and pressure loss, compared to other cell geometries. A material selection was performed considering the specific composition of the fluids and the operating temperatures of the HX, and Silicon Carbide (SiC) was identified as promising materials for the application. The 3D printing of a polymeric template combined with the replica method was chosen as the best manufacturing approach to produce SiC lattices. The heat transfer behaviour of various lattice configurations, based on the Kelvin cell, was determined through computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The results are used to discuss the application of such structures to compact high temperature HXs.

Highlights

Equipment that works at high temperature must be designed by investigating materials, structure and manufacturing processes that can ensure properties and performance required by the application, such as thermal stability, thermal conductivity, thermal expansion, service temperature resistance, oxidation resistance, chemical stability, etc
Three main ceramic materials are widely used for high temperature applications where cellular ceramics architectures play the main role: Zirconium Dioxide, Aluminum Oxide and Silicon Carbide (SiC—blue areas)
The lattice architecture was designed using a Kelvin cell, which provided the best compromise among effective thermal conductivity, specific surface area, dispersion coefficient and pressure loss, compared to other cell geometries

Summary

Introduction

Equipment that works at high temperature (above 1000 ◦C) must be designed by investigating materials, structure and manufacturing processes that can ensure properties and performance required by the application, such as thermal stability, thermal conductivity, thermal expansion, service temperature resistance, oxidation resistance, chemical stability, etc. Such components can be found in different industrial plants in the form of heat exchangers, reactors, burners, solar receivers, heat storage systems and so on. Several types of unit-cells (cube, rotated cube, kelvin, octet, crystal, star, etc.) have been investigated finding that each offers very different properties from the others, such as specific surface area, porosity, pressure drop, effective thermal conductivity, heat transfer coefficient, dispersion coefficient and fluid mixing [13,14,15,16,17]

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Results

Conclusion