Study on hydraulic and thermal performance of printed circuit heat transfer surface with distributed airfoil fins

The print circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) is a new kind of compact and high efficiency plate-heat-exchangers which can be used for high pressure and high temperature systems, such as the supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle. In this study, the geometrical parameters of airfoil fins are investigated by the numerical simulation. The local and overall heat transfer characteristics as well as the dynamic performance are analyzed with different pitches. The result shows that the heat transfer rate decreases because of the strong variation of properties of supercritical CO2, but the pressure loss remains almost constant along the main flow direction. Meanwhile, the effect of transverse pitch and staggered longitudinal pitch are analyzed comprehensively. Furthermore, the correlations of j and f factors are fitted for the studied airfoil printed circuited heat transfer surfaces. It is proved that a large windward area and a short length can lead to a better comprehensive heat transfer performance.