Thermal-hydraulic performance of different discontinuous fins used in a printed circuit heat exchanger for supercritical CO₂

In this study, four discontinuous fin configurations in parallel and staggered arrangements are investigated to classify their effects on the thermal-hydraulic performance of a printed circuited heat exchanger. Meanwhile, the formation mechanism of the flow resistance of supercritical CO₂ is studied in an airfoil fin printed circuited heat exchanger. It shows that the fin configurations have little effect on the overall thermal-hydraulic performance when the mass flow rate of supercritical CO₂ is low. The flow resistance dramatically increases during the heating process due to velocity increment caused by increased density, but is not significantly affected by the change in dynamic viscosity.