Micro heat exchanger

Micro heat exchangers, Micro-scale heat exchangers, or microstructured heat exchangers are heat exchangers in which (at least one) fluid flows in lateral confinements with typical dimensions below 1 mm. The most typical such confinement are microchannels, which are channels with a hydraulic diameter below 1 mm. Microchannel heat exchangers can be made from metal or ceramic.^[1]

Microchannel heat exchangers can be used for many applications including:

• high-performance aircraft gas turbine engines^[2]
• heat pumps^[3]
• Microprocessor and microchip cooling^[4]
• air conditioning^[5]

Background

Investigation of microscale thermal devices is motivated by the single phase internal flow correlation for convective heat transfer:

${\displaystyle h={\mathit {Nu}}_{c}{\frac {k}{d}}}$

Where ${\displaystyle h}$ is the heat transfer coefficient, ${\displaystyle {\mathit {Nu}}_{c}}$ is the Nusselt number, ${\displaystyle k}$ is the thermal conductivity of the fluid and ${\displaystyle d}$ is the hydraulic diameter of the channel or duct. In internal laminar flows, the Nusselt number becomes a constant. This is a result which can be arrived at analytically: For the case of a constant wall temperature, ${\displaystyle {\mathit {Nu}}_{c}=3.657}$ and for the case of constant heat flux ${\displaystyle {\mathit {Nu}}_{c}=4.364}$ for round tubes.^[6] The last value is increased to 140/17 = 8.23 for flat parallel plates. As Reynolds number is proportional to hydraulic diameter, fluid flow in channels of small hydraulic diameter will predominantly be laminar in character. This correlation therefore indicates that the heat transfer coefficient increases as channel diameter decreases. Should the hydraulic diameter in forced convection be on the order of tens or hundreds of micrometres, an extremely high heat transfer coefficient should result.

This hypothesis was initially investigated by Tuckerman and Pease.^[7] Their positive results led to further research ranging from classical investigations of single channel heat transfer^[8] to more applied investigations in parallel micro-channel and micro scale plate fin heat exchangers. Recent work in the field has focused on the potential of two-phase flows at the micro-scale.^[9][10][11]

Classification

Just like "conventional" or "macro scale" heat exchangers, micro heat exchangers have one, two or even three^[12] fluidic flows. In the case of one fluidic flow, heat can be transferred to the fluid (each of the fluids can be a gas, a liquid, or a multiphase flow) from electrically powered heater cartridges, or removed from the fluid by electrically powered elements like Peltier chillers. In the case of two fluidic flows, micro heat exchangers are usually classified by the orientation of the fluidic flows to another as "cross flow" or "counter flow" devices. If a chemical reaction is conducted inside a micro heat exchanger, the latter is also called a microreactor.

See also

• Micro process engineering

References

1. Kee, Robert J., et al. "The design, fabrication, and evaluation of a ceramic counter-flow microchannel heat exchanger." Applied Thermal Engineering 31.11 (2011): 2004-2012.
2. Northcutt, B., & Mudawar, I. (2012). Enhanced design of cross-flow microchannel heat exchanger module for high-performance aircraft gas turbine engines. Journal of Heat Transfer, 134(6), 061801.
3. Moallem, E., Padhmanabhan, S., Cremaschi, L., & Fisher, D. E. (2012). Experimental investigation of the surface temperature and water retention effects on the frosting performance of a compact microchannel heat exchanger for heat pump systems. international journal of refrigeration, 35(1), 171-186.
4. Sarvar-Ardeh, S., Rafee, R., Rashidi, S. (2021). Hybrid nanofluids with temperature-dependent properties for use in double-layered microchannel heat sink; hydrothermal investigation. Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. cite journal https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtice.2021.05.007
5. Xu, B., Shi, J., Wang, Y., Chen, J., Li, F., & Li, D. (2014). Experimental Study of Fouling Performance of Air Conditioning System with Microchannel Heat Exchanger.
6. Incropera & Dewitt^{[full citation needed]}
7. Tuckerman, D.B.; Pease, R.F.W. (1981). "High-performance heat sinking for VLSI". IEEE Electron Device Letters. 2 (5): 126–9. Bibcode:1981IEDL....2..126T. doi:10.1109/EDL.1981.25367. S2CID 40590765.^{[non-primary source needed]}
8. Santiago, Kenny, Goodson, Zhang^{[full citation needed]}
9. Yen, Tzu-Hsiang; Kasagi, Nobuhide; Suzuki, Yuji (2003). "Forced convective boiling heat transfer in microtubes at low mass and heat fluxes". International Journal of Multiphase Flow. 29 (12): 1771–92. doi:10.1016/j.ijmultiphaseflow.2003.09.004.
10. Steinke, Mark E.; Kandlikar, Satish G. (2004). "An Experimental Investigation of Flow Boiling Characteristics of Water in Parallel Microchannels". Journal of Heat Transfer. 126 (4): 518. doi:10.1115/1.1778187.
11. Mudawar^{[full citation needed]}
12. Noel C. Willis, Jr. "Analysis Of Three-Fluid, Crossflow Heat Exchangers." NASA Technical Report, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, D. C. May 1968, p. 53.