TY - JOUR
T1 - A comparison of metal-foam heat exchangers to compact multilouver designs for air-side heat transfer applications
AU - Dai, Z.
AU - Nawaz, K.
AU - Park, Y.
AU - Chen, Q.
AU - Jacobi, A. M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is financially supported by the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Technology Institute (project 06030).
PY - 2012/1
Y1 - 2012/1
N2 - High-porosity metal foams, with novel thermal, mechanical, electrical, and acoustic properties, are being more widely used in various industrial applications. In this paper, open-cell aluminum foam is considered as a highly compact replacement for conventional louver fins in brazed aluminum heat exchangers. A model based on the -NTU method is developed to compare the flat-tube, serpentine louver-fin heat exchanger to the flat-tube metal-foam heat exchanger. The two heat exchangers are subjected to identical thermal-hydraulic requirements, and volume, mass, and cost of the metal-foam and louver-fin designs are compared. The results show that the same performance is achieved using the metal-foam heat exchanger but a lighter and smaller heat exchanger is required. However, the cost of the metal-foam heat exchanger is currently much higher than that of the louver-fin heat exchanger, because of the high price of metal foams. If the price of metal foam falls to equal that of louver-fin stock (per unit mass), then the metal-foam heat exchanger will be less expensive, smaller, and lighter than the louver-fin heat exchanger, with identical thermal performance.
AB - High-porosity metal foams, with novel thermal, mechanical, electrical, and acoustic properties, are being more widely used in various industrial applications. In this paper, open-cell aluminum foam is considered as a highly compact replacement for conventional louver fins in brazed aluminum heat exchangers. A model based on the -NTU method is developed to compare the flat-tube, serpentine louver-fin heat exchanger to the flat-tube metal-foam heat exchanger. The two heat exchangers are subjected to identical thermal-hydraulic requirements, and volume, mass, and cost of the metal-foam and louver-fin designs are compared. The results show that the same performance is achieved using the metal-foam heat exchanger but a lighter and smaller heat exchanger is required. However, the cost of the metal-foam heat exchanger is currently much higher than that of the louver-fin heat exchanger, because of the high price of metal foams. If the price of metal foam falls to equal that of louver-fin stock (per unit mass), then the metal-foam heat exchanger will be less expensive, smaller, and lighter than the louver-fin heat exchanger, with identical thermal performance.
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U2 - 10.1080/01457632.2011.584812
DO - 10.1080/01457632.2011.584812
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:80052583924
SN - 0145-7632
VL - 33
SP - 21
EP - 30
JO - Heat Transfer Engineering
JF - Heat Transfer Engineering
IS - 1
ER -