The Effect of Longitudinal Heat Conduction on Thermal Enhancement of Plastic Plate Heat Exchangers

Abstract

The metals are the most popular materials for the plate heat exchangers due to high thermal conductivity. The thermal performance of the metallic plate heat exchanger is degraded by longitudinal heat conduction in the plate. For the cabinet cooling system and ventilator, the metallic plate heat exchanger can be replaced by the plastic plate heat exchanger. In this article, the longitudinal heat conduction in the plastic heat exchanger is studied by using the heat transfer models with and without longitudinal heat conduction, which were proposed in our previous work. The effects of both transverse heat conduction and longitudinal heat conduction can be considered. The thermal performances of the plastic plate heat exchanger and metallic plate heat exchanger are compared. We find out that in the plastic plate, both the transverse heat conduction and longitudinal heat conduction are weakened because of the low thermal conductivity. The high-density polyethylene plastic plate heat exchanger has better thermal performance than that of the aluminum plate heat exchanger.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This article was supported by Initiation Fund of Inner Mongolia University of Technology (BS2021070).

Notes on contributors

Saranmanduh Borjigin

Saranmanduh Borjigin is a lecturer in the School of Energy and Power Engineering, Inner Mongolia University of Technology. He received his PhD degree in Engineering Thermophysics from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2021. His main research interests are heat transfer enhancement and design of compact heat exchanger system.

Ting Ma

Ting Ma is a Professor at the School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University. He received his PhD in Engineering Thermophysics from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2012. He was a visiting scholar in the Mechanical Engineering Department at University of Nevada Las Vegas from August 2011 to January 2012 and a visiting scholar in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Virginia Tech from March 2014 to February 2015. His research interests include heat transfer enhancement under high temperature and high-pressure conditions, compact mini/micro-channel heat exchangers, thermoelectric power generator and cooler, computational fluid dynamics and numerical heat/mass transfer. He has published more than 40 journal papers and contributed 2 book chapters. He has been invited to give keynote lectures and seminars at international conferences and universities. He has been an Associate Editor of ASME Journal of Solar Energy Engineering and has become a committee member of ASME Heat Transfer Division K-18 since 2018.

Min Zeng

Min Zeng is a Professor of School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University. He received his PhD degree in Engineering Thermophysics from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2004. He was awarded a scholarship from the Swedish Institute from September 2011 to September 2012 for postdoctoral research at Lund University. He was awarded New Century Excellent Talents in University of China. His main research interests are enhanced heat transfer, compact heat exchangers, solid oxide fuel cell, numerical heat transfer and transport phenomena in porous media. He has published more than 40 papers in international journals or conferences and was also authorized with 2 USA and 8 China Invention Patents.

Qiuwang Wang

Qiuwang Wang is a Professor in the School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering Thermophysics from Xi’an Jiaotong University, China, in 1996. He then joined the faculty of the university and took the professor post in 2001. His main research interests include computational fluid dynamics and numerical heat transfer, heat transfer enhancement, transport phenomena in porous media, compact heat exchangers, building energy savings and indoor air quality. He has also been author or coauthor of four books and more than 200 journal papers. He has obtained more than 40 China Invention Patents and four US Patents.