Microchannel heat exchanger for two-phase Mixed Refrigerant Joule Thomson process

Mixed Refrigerant Joule Thomson (MR-JT) refrigerators are widely used in various kinds of cryogenic systems these days. Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger (PCHE) is one of the promising cryogenic compact recuperators for MR-JT refrigerators due to its compactness, high NTU and robustness. However, PCHE...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Baek Seungwhan, Lee, Jisung, Lee, Cheonkyu, Jeong Sangkwon
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Bypasses
Flow distribution
Heat exchangers
Microchannels
Refrigerants
Refrigerators
Regenerators
Repair & maintenance
Straight channels
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Summary:Mixed Refrigerant Joule Thomson (MR-JT) refrigerators are widely used in various kinds of cryogenic systems these days. Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger (PCHE) is one of the promising cryogenic compact recuperators for MR-JT refrigerators due to its compactness, high NTU and robustness. However, PCHE composed with microchannel bundles can cause flow mal-distribution, and it can cause the degradation of thermal performance of the system. To mitigate the flow mal-distribution problem, the cross link (or intra-layer bypass) can be adapted to parallel microchannels. Two heat exchangers are fabricated in this study; one has straight channels, and the other one has intra-layer bypass structure between channels to enhance the flow distribution. The MR-JT refrigerators are operated with these two heat exchanger and the no-load temperatures are compared. The lower no load temperature achieved with the intra-layer bypass structured heat exchanger. The results indicate that the flow mal-distribution in the microchannel heat exchanger can be mitigated with intra-layer bypass structure, and relaxation of flow mal-distribution in the heat exchanger guarantee the MR-JT refrigerator's performance.
ISSN:0094-243X
1551-7616
DOI:10.1063/1.4860758