ICONE19-43248 Experimental study on method for heat transfer enhancement using a porous material

Abstract

There are several methods for enhancement of heat transfer; for example, there are attaching various fins on the heat transfer surface, processing the surface roughly, and so on. When cooling high temperature circular or rectangular channels by forced convection of gas, there are several methods for enhancement of heat transfer such as attaching radial or spiral fins on the channel surface or inserting twisted tape in the channel. In the case of the gas heating type steam reformer, disk type fins are attached on the outside surface of the reformer tube, and the tube is inserted into the guide tube to increase an amount of heat transferred from the high temperature gas. However, it has to take into consideration the deterioration of the structure strength by attaching the fins on the tube surface with the design of the steam reformer. The objective of this study is to clarify performances of a method for heat transfer enhancement using porous material with high porosity. The experiment has been performed using an apparatus which simulated the passage structure of the steam reformer to obtain characteristics of heat transfer and pressure drop. From the results obtained in this experiment, the heat transfer rate by this method showed a good performance in the laminar flow region. It was also found that the method for heat transfer enhancement using porous material with high porosity is further improved under the high temperature condition as compared with the other methods for heat transfer enhancement.