Polymeric hollow fiber heat exchangers

Paper in proceedings (conference paper)

en

Metallic heat exchangers have a number of well-known shortcomings such as high weight and cost and low resistance to corrosion. Polymeric hollow fiber heat exchangers were proposed about a decade ago as an alternative for low temperature applications. Although experimental results have been published for liquid-to-liquid applications, there is no data for liquid-to-gas applications. To overcome this lack of data, two liquid-to-air cross-flow heat exchangers were prepared and tested. Two types of polypropylene hollow fibers (wall thickness 50 μm, outside diameter 800 μm and 600 μm) were used to create heat exchangers with a heat exchange area of approximately 0.6 m2. An original approach (fiber fabrics were woven) was utilized to achieve a uniform distribution of fibers. The heat transfer performance was studied with hot liquids (60–90°C ethyleneglycolwater brine or water) flowing inside the fibers and cooling air flowing across the fibers. Experiments showed that hollow fiber cross-flow heat exchangers can achieve high values of overall heat-transfer coefficients (200–450 W/m2 K) and can compete to ordinary finned-tube heat exchangers.

polymeric hollow fibers, heat exchanger, forced convection

2016-09-07

Wessex Institute

UK

978-1-78466-109-0

1743-3533

Heat Transfer XIV Simulation and Experiments in Heat Transfer and its Applications

WIT Transactions on Engineering Sciences

106

95–105

11