An experimental study has been carried out to investigate the convective heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of microencapsulated phase change material (MPCM) slurry in a coil heat exchanger (CHX). The thermal and fluid properties of the MPCM slurries were determined using a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and a rotating drum viscometer, respectively. The overall heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop of slurries at 4.6% and 8.7% mass fractions were measured using an instrumented CHX. A friction factor correlation for MPCM slurry in the CHX has been developed in terms of Dean number and mass fraction of the MPCM. The effects of flow velocity and mass fraction of MPCM slurry on thermal performance have been analyzed by taking into account heat exchanger effectiveness and the performance efficiency coefficient (PEC). The experimental results showed that using MPCM slurry should improve the overall performance of a conventional CHX, even though the MPCM slurries are characterized by having high viscosity.
Background. An experimental study of buoyancy driven convection heat transfer in an open cavity was conducted. Method of Approach. Test cavities were constructed with calorimeter plates bonded to Styrofoam insulation. The inside of the cavities was heated and then exposed to ambient air for approximately thirty minutes. Different size cavities were examined at inclination angles of 0, 45, and 90deg. The heat transfer coefficient was determined from an energy balance on each calorimeter plate. The cavity’s plate temperatures varied spatially due to the transient nature of the tests. A parameter describing the nonisothermal cavity wall temperature variation was defined in order to compare with isothermal cavity heat transfer results. Results. Results showed that the cavity Nusselt number, based on a cavity averaged temperature, was insensitive to the transient development of nonisothermal conditions within the cavity. Comparison of cavity-average Nusselt number for the current study, where the Rayleigh number ranged from 5×106 to 2×108, to data from the literature showed good agreement. Cavity-average Nusselt number relations for inclination angles of 0, 45, and 90deg in the form of NuH,cav=CRa1∕3 resulted in coefficients of 0.091, 0.105, 0.093, respectively. The 45deg inclination angle orientation yielded the largest Nusselt numbers, which was similar to previous literature results. Trends in the local plate Nusselt numbers were examined and found similar to data from the literature.
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