Recent research developments in polymer heat exchangers – A review

A percolating network of hybrid fillers can provide significant synergic enhancement of thermal conductivity in polymer matrix composites. Especially, when platelets and fibers of high aspect ratios are mixed to form a percolating network, the percolation thresholds are small. However, the optimum ratio of platelets to fibers must be acquired for the maximum synergic enhancement. In this work, polysulfone (PSU) matrix‐hybrid fillers composite is designed with high thermal conductivity using a computational model. The calibration of computational model with several experimentally measured thermal conductivities of polymer matrix‐hybrid nanocomposites leads to the composition where maximum synergic effect/maximum thermal conductivity is expected. For the specific PSU–Graphene nano‐platelets (GNPs)/Carbon nano‐tubes (CNTs) hybrid composites synthesized in this study, the composition with maximum thermal conductivity as designed by the model is PSU/8.4% GNPs/1.6% CNTs. The samples produced experimentally around this composition have shown close agreement with the predictions of the model. Sensitivity analyses and parametric studies conducted on the model highlight that the dimensional parameters and the interface resistance of the fillers are the most sensitive to enhance the effective thermal conductivity. POLYM. COMPOS., 40:1419–1432, 2019. © 2018 Society of Plastics Engineers

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“…The selected range for

K_{normalm}

is 0.1–0.4 W/mK since most of the polymers fall in this range of thermal conductivity .

K_{i n c, 1}

and

K_{i n c, 2}

are varied from 1 W/mK to the highest known thermal conductivity material of its own kind.…”

Section: Parametric Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and development of thermally conductive hybrid nano‐composites in polysulfone matrix

et al. 2018

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“…Currently, main focus has been on the effect of the nature of the polymer matrix and the filler type, the filler shape, and filler quantity on the composite TC . Hence, the relevance of the material properties as such has been the key research angle.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relevance of material and processing parameters on the thermal conductivity of thermoplastic composites

Wieme

Tang

Delva

et al. 2017

Polymer Engineering & Sci

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Thermoplastics composites show vast promise as an alternative for thermal management applications in the scope of the development of next-generation electronics and heat exchangers. Their low cost, reduced weight, and corrosion resistance make them an attractive replacer for traditionally used metals, in case their thermal conductivity (TC) can be sufficiently increased by designing the material (e.g., filler type and shape) and processing (e.g., dispersion quality, mixing, and shaping) parameters. In the present contribution, the relevance of both types of parameters is discussed, and guidelines are formulated for future research to increase the TC of thermoplastic polymer composites. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 58:466-474, 2018.

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“…[1][2][3] If a polymer can be engineered with high thermal conductivity, polymeric heat spreaders and heat exchanger can be manufactured with superb features including structural compactness, light weight, resistance against corrosions, and ease of processing and low-cost, which could in turn find many applications in electronics, water and energy industry. [4,5] Thus, enhancing the thermal conductivity of polymers and polymer composites are of great interests. Over the past two decades, with a better understanding of the fundamental heat transfer process at the micro-, nano-and even molecular-scales, there have been significant efforts devoting to enhancing the thermal conductivity of polymers and polymer nanocomposites, which are expected to enable a broader range of applications.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermal conductivity of polymers and polymer nanocomposites

Huang

Qian

Yang

2018

Materials Science and Engineering: R: Reports

640

391

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Polymers are widely used in industry and in our daily life because of their diverse functionality, light weight, low cost and excellent chemical stability. However, on some applications such as heat exchangers and electronic packaging, the low thermal conductivity of polymers is one of the major technological barriers. Enhancing the thermal conductivity of polymers is important for these applications and has become a very active research topic over the past two decades. In this review article, we aim to: 1). systematically summarize the molecular level understanding on the thermal transport mechanisms in polymers in terms of polymer morphology, chain structure and inter-chain coupling; 2). highlight the rationales in the recent efforts in enhancing the thermal conductivity of nanostructured polymers and polymer nanocomposites. Finally, we outline the main advances, challenges and outlooks for highly thermal-conductive polymer and polymer nanocomposites. the inter-chain coupling. Fig. 1 Schematic diagrams of a polymer: (a) the morphology of a polymer consisting of crystalline and amorphous domains; (b) structure of a polymer chain.In addition to engineering the morphology of polymer chains, another common method to enhance the thermal conductivity of polymers is to blend polymers with highly thermal conductive fillers. The progress of nanotechnology over the last two decades not only provides more diverse high thermal conductivity fillers of different material types and topological shapes but also advances the understanding at the nanoscale. Fig. 2 shows a sketch of a polymer nanocomposite to illustrate the thermal transport mechanisms. In general, there are two types of polymer nanocomposites depending on whether nano-fillers form a network or not. When the filler concentration is low, no inter-filler networks could be formed, as shown in Fig. 2(a). The thermal conductivity is essentially determined by the filler-matrix coupling, i.e, interfacial thermal resistance, and the concentration and the geometric shapes of fillers. When the filler concentration is large enough, high conductivity fillers might form thermally conductive networks, as shown in Fig. 2(b). Although nanocomposites with filler network could possess a higher thermal conductivity than that without a network, their thermal conductivity could still be low due to the large inter-filler thermal contact resistance. Recently, three-dimensional fillers, such as carbon and graphene foams, have drawn a lot of attention. The fundamental thermal transport mechanisms and recent synthesis efforts in both types of nanocomposites are reviewed.This review article is organized as follows. In Section 2, we introduce the experimental progress on the enhancement of thermal conductivity by aligning polymer chains, and then review the methods to further tune the thermal conductivity by engineering chain structure and inter-chain coupling, as illustrated in Fig. 3(a). In Section 3, we discuss the thermal conductivity of polymer nanocomposites both with and without inter...

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Recent research developments in polymer heat exchangers – A review

Cited by 177 publications

References 76 publications

Design and development of thermally conductive hybrid nano‐composites in polysulfone matrix

Design and development of thermally conductive hybrid nano‐composites in polysulfone matrix

The relevance of material and processing parameters on the thermal conductivity of thermoplastic composites

Thermal conductivity of polymers and polymer nanocomposites

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