Heat and Mass Transfer Research Journal (HMTRJ)

Research Article

Thermal Performance Study of Polymeric Hollow-Fiber Heat-Exchangers

Ampere A. Tseng¹and Miroslav Raudensky²

¹Manufacturing Institute, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287 USA

²Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Laboratory, Brno University of Technology, 616 69 Brno, Czech Republic

Submitted: August 24, 2017; Accepted: January 27, 2018

Abstract

Polymeric hollow-fiber heat-exchangers (PHFHEs) have recently attracted great attentions for their superior characters, from light weight to high chemical resistance, as compared with that of metal-based heat exchangers (MBHEs). In this article, a PHFHE, which can be used for car radiators, is built to test its thermal performance in an experimental wind tunnel. A MBHE, which uses stainless steel tubes, has also been built with the major geometrical parameters equivalent to that of the PHFHE tested, so that the results from these two heat exchangers can be compared with each other. Experimental results indicate that the heat flow of the PHFHE can be more than 11% higher than that of the stainless-steel heat exchanger at similar operation conditions.

Keywords

heat exchanger; polymer hollow-fiber; similarity system, thermal analysis

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