Experimental comparison on energy consumption and heat transfer performance of corrugated H-type and L-type brazed plate heat exchangers

Abstract

Global energy agencies and commissions highlight the importance of energy efficient and high performance systems to maintain a sustainable environment. At this point, brazed plate heat exchangers provide enhanced thermal performance with design compactness and reduce high energy consumption caused by the pumping power. This experimental work uncovers the thermal and hydraulic performance of the corrugated H-type and L-type brazed plate heat exchangers. The selected heat exchanger systems satisfy two main criteria: identical total heat transfer surface area and total volume of fluid within the systems. The experiments are conducted between 50 L/h and 200 L/h flow rates, and the temperature levels vary in a range of 10 °C to 50 °C. The uncertainty analysis for the experimental equipment and components have been documented. Furthermore, the experiments have been repeated three-times to eliminate the measurement errors and discrepancies. The findings indicate that heat transfer rate experienced by the H-type BPHE is higher than the L-type topology for the entire volumetric flow rates, and heat transfer enhancement reaches up to 7.4%. In contrary to the thermal performance, the L-type brazed plate heat exchanger yields lower energy consumption than the H-type system (except 50 L/h flow rate). The experimental findings show that total energy consumption between 100 L/h and 200 L/h flow rates decreases up to 10.5% via the L-type corrugated topology.