Plate Heat Exchangers – Flow Analysis through Mini Channels

The study presents a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) numerical study for two different models of mini channels, included in plate heat exchangers structure. The influence of geometric characteristics of the two studied plates on the intensification process of heat transfer was studied comparatively. For this purpose, it was examined the distribution of velocity, temperatures fields and distribution of convection coefficient along the active mini channel. The analyzed mini channels had the inclination angles of 30° respectively 60° and the Reynold flow number was 3500. Also a session of experimental measurements have been carried out on the two types of analyzed plates for the heat exchangers, confirming the results obtained through numerical simulation that the plate heat exchanger model using mini channels with inclination angle of β = 60° provides best heat transfer.