Abstract
The thermal performance of a plate heat exchanger (PHE) can be affected by non-uniform distribution of flow (maldistribution) between the channels. In this paper, a numerical procedure is proposed for thermal modeling of a PHE considering the maldistribution effect. The results of proposed approach are validated by reported experiments. According to the obtained results, significant influence of considering flow maldistribution in achieving the enhanced prediction accuracy can be inferred. Moreover, the effects of different parameters on the effectiveness of PHE have been studied through parametric study and the plate number is introduced as the influential parameter on flow distribution of channels. Furthermore, it is found that by increasing the plate number, an increase in number of transfer units (NTU) and the subsequent improvement in thermal performance on one hand, and a decrease in maldistribution parameter (m2) and the consequent deteriorated performance due to maldistribution on the other hand would be achieved. Increasing the plate number without considering maldistribution effect is not recommended especially in lower chevron angles.
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