Experimental investigation of near compact wire mesh heat exchangers

Abstract

In this paper, the performance of three liquid-to-gas heat exchangers are experimentally compared. The first one is made of copper tubes embedded in a stack of stainless steel wire meshes, the second one is made of copper tubes embedded in an aluminum foam of porosity 0.94 and the third one, a bare heat exchanger made of plain copper tubes, all having identical dimensions. The heat exchangers are tested under forced convection in an open loop vertical wind tunnel facility. Air is used as external working fluid and distilled water as tube side heat transfer fluid. The air side pressure drop and the fluid temperatures are recorded for different air and water flow rates. The novelty of the present study is that a simple and cost effective heat exchanger model is developed using commercially available wire mesh screens. The heat exchangers are compared based on an overall performance criterion adopted from literature. The wire mesh heat exchanger shows better performance than the metal foam heat exchanger under identical conditions. Possible reasons for heat transfer augmentation in the near compact heat exchangers are discussed.