Comparisons of the heat transfer and pressure drop of the microchannel and minichannel heat exchangers

Abstract

The present study investigated the comparisons of the heat transfer and pressure drop of the microchannel and minichannel heat exchangers, both numerically and experimentally. The results obtained from this study indicated that the heat transfer rate obtained from microchannel heat exchanger was higher than those obtained from the minichannel heat exchangers; however, the pressure drops obtained from the microchannel heat exchanger were also higher than those obtained from the minichannel heat exchangers. As a result, the microchannel heat exchanger should be selected for the systems where high heat transfer rates are needed. In addition, at the same average velocity of water in the channels used in this study, the effectiveness obtained from the microchannel heat exchanger was 1.2–1.53 times of that obtained from the minichannel heat exchanger. Furthermore, the results obtained from the experiments were in good agreement with those obtained from the design theory and the numerical analyses.