Numerical Study of the Inertia Effect on Flow Distribution in Micro-gap Plate Heat Exchanger

This paper presents numerical study on flow and heat transfer characteristics in micro-gap plate heat exchanger. In particular, we investigate the effect of flow inertia on the flow distribution from single main channel to multiple parallel micro-gaps. The flow regime of the main channel is varied from laminar regime (Reynolds number of 100) to turbulent regime (Reynolds number of 10000) by changing the flow rate, and non-uniformity of the flow distribution and temperature field is evaluated quantitatively based on the standard deviation. The flow distribution is found to be significantly affected by not only the header design but also the flow rate of the main channel. It is also observed that the non-uniformity of the temperature field has its maximum at the intermediate flow regime