Carbon-foam finned tubes in air–water heat exchangers

An engineering model is formulated to account for the effects of porosity and pore diameter on the hydrodynamic and thermal performance of a carbon-foam finned tube heat exchanger. The hydrodynamic and thermal resistances are obtained from well-established correlations that are extended herein to account for the influence of the porous carbon foam. The influence of the foam is characterized on the basis of a unit-cube geometric model that describes the internal structure, the exposed surface, the permeability and the effective conductivity as a function of porosity and pore diameter. The engineering model is validated by comparison with experiments that characterize heat transfer in an air–water radiator made from porous carbon foam. The model is also used in to conduct a parametric study to show the influence of the porosity and pore diameter of the foam. The parametric study suggests that in comparison to conventional aluminum finned-tube radiators, improvements of approximately 15% in thermal performance are possible without changing the frontal area, or the air flow rate and pressure drop. The engineering model developed herein can be used by engineers to assess quantitatively the suitability of porous carbon foam as a fin material in the design of air–water heat exchangers.