Study on heat transfer and pressure drop performances of airfoil-shaped printed circuit heat exchanger

Printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) is one of the most promising micro-channel heat exchangers for very high temperature and high pressure conditions. In the present study, PCHE has four channel configurations: straight, zigzag, s-shaped fin and airfoil-shaped fin. In this paper, we investigate the effects of parameters such as Reynolds number, the number of fin rows, fin transverse pitch and longitudinal pitch on the pressure drop and heat transfer by means of CFD code. It is found that the heat transfer and fluid flow approach fully developed conditions when the number of tube rows is greater than 9, and both of the f and Nu decrease with the increase of fin transverse pitch and longitudinal pitch. The f and Nu correlations are obtained.