This paper documents heat and fluid flow characteristics of the counterflow heat exchangers with line-to-line flow channels embedded fins of a fractal air-water cooler for hydrodynamic power plant generator which was analyzed numerically using AnSys 2021 R1 Fluent software to simultaneously solve the continuity, momentum, and heat equations in a 3D computational domain, and the conformal mesh technique is applied to generate the grid for the conjugate heat flow in the cooling system. At the low Reynolds numbers, the laminar viscous flow model was used, while at higher Re numbers Re~1200 the transitional flow regime was studied on the k-epsilon turbulent model. The governing pressure drop was ~(35-45)x105 Pa. Numerical results revealed that the fractal geometry can improve the integrated performance of the cooling system. The pressure drop through the pipe channel of the cooler as decreases obviously when compared with that of conventional parallel channels. The fractal system showed a more uniform temperature distribution and relatively lower maximum surface temperature. Application of the fins could intensify the transfer of heat remarkably and lower the power of the pump in a quick fashion related to the conventional tube system.
Publication Date
3/3/2022
Publisher
7th Virtual International Conference on Science, Technology and Management in Energy
عبدالمطلب عبدالكريم محسن | Abdulmuttalib Abdulkareem MUHSEN | 5335