Experimental Study of Flow and Heat Transfer in Heat Exchanger with Small Channels

The experimental study of the flow resistance and heat transfer characteristics are conducted for water and ethylene glycol solution (66% Wt) flowing in the heat exchanger with small rectangular microchannels . The heat exchanger having the channels of 0.4 mm in width, 2.0 mm in height, and 20 mm in length is heated by a hearing rod at the bottom surface, the upper and two side surfaces are adiabatic. During experiments, the Reynolds number are ranged from 2 to 2 500. The experimental results show that the flow friction factor decreases and Nusselt number increases with increasing Reynolds number for water and ethylene glycol solution. At a fixed Reynolds number, the Nusselt number for ethylene glycol solution with larger Prandtl number is greater than that for water. Meanwhile, the correlations of flow resistance and heat transfer in the heat exchanger with small channels are obtained for engineering application.

Project Supported:

Clc Number:

TK124