Investigation on Thermal-Hydraulic Performance in a Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger with Airfoil and Vortex Generator Fins for Supercritical Liquefied Natural Gas

Abstract

In this study, the thermal and hydraulic performances of six different printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) configurations with supercritical liquefied natural gas as the working fluid are studied by a numerical method. Firstly, the thermal and hydraulic performances of the PCHE with airfoil fins are investigated at different operating pressures, which indicate that the PCHE with airfoil fins has better thermal performance but worse hydraulic performance when it operates at higher pressure condition. Furthermore, the effects of different PCHE configurations on the thermal and hydraulic performances are analyzed in detail. The results show that delta vortex generators (VGs) arranged upstream the airfoils can provide better thermal performance than VGs arranged downstream the airfoils, and the thermal performance of the common-flow-up configuration is not always better than the common-flow-down configuration. Finally, the overall heat transfer performance of PCHEs is evaluated by the volume goodness criterion under the same mass flow rate. The results show that the straight channel PCHE with front common-flow-up delta VG and airfoil fins has the best volume goodness factor among the six PCHE configurations.