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ISSN Online: 2379-1748

ISBN Flash Drive: 978-1-56700-483-0

ISBN Online: 978-1-56700-482-3

4th Thermal and Fluids Engineering Conference
April, 14–17, 2019 , Las Vegas, NV, USA

EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF HEAT PIPE HEAT EXCHANGER (HPHE) FOR WASTE HEAT RECOVERY APPLICATION

Get access (open in a dialog) pages 843-851
DOI: 10.1615/TFEC2019.fip.028029

Abstract

Due to environmental concern and the high price of the fuel, waste heat recovery has become a central issue for the industrial and commercial energy user. A large portion of the waste heat comes out as low-grade energy and with the conventional energy recovery technology, it is hard to justify economically. Heat pipe heat exchanger (HPHE) could be employed in this regard to recovering waste heat economically. In this study, a HPHE consisting of heat pipes arranged in stages has been developed where the heat pipes were constructed with the copper tube by attaching the fin (seven in each heat pipe), making the vacuum, injecting the water as fluid then finally heating and sealed it up. The heat pipes were constructed without any wick and works based on the thermosyphon principle and assembled vertically. The constructed HPHE was placed between two ducts carrying hot and cold fluid. The cold fluid was atmospheric air and temperature of the hot fluid was varied from 56-66°C. Performance of the HPHE was evaluated by analyzing heat transfer rate, heat transfer coefficient, and effectiveness. Effect of the filling ratio of water inside the heat pipe was also evaluated and the test was conducted for different air flow rate. The maximum performance of the HPHE was found with 45% filling ratio but it depends on the environmental conditions. The performance of the HPHE was found to increase with the increase of the hot air flow rate.