Elongating axial conduction path design to enhance performance of cryogeinc compact PCHE (Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger)

Abstract

PCHE (Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger) is one of the promising cryogenic compact heat exchangers due to its compactness, high NTU and robustness. The essential procedure for fabricating PCHE is chemical etching and diffusion bonding. These technologies can create sufficiently large heat transfer area for a heat exchanger with numerous micro channels (D h<1 mm). However, PCHE shows disadvantages of high pressure drop and large axial conduction loss. Axial conduction is a critical design issue of a cryogenic heat exchanger when it is operated with a large temperature difference. Elongating the heat conduction path is implemented to reduce axial conduction in PCHE in this study. Two PCHEs with identical channel configuration are fabricated, for comparison, one of which is modified to have longer heat conduction path. Both heat exchangers are tested in cryogenic environment (300∼70 K), and the modified PCHE shows better performance with significantly reduced axial conduction. The experimental results indicate that the modification of the heat conduction path is effective to increase the performance of PCHE. This paper discusses and analyses the thermal characteristics of the modified PCHE obtained experimentally. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.