CFD Analysis of Maldistribution in Mini-channel Heat Exchanger

Abstract

Heat exchanger plays an important role in engineering application.Many places ?nd application of heat exchanger starting from the big one to Nano channel heat exchanger. Among the di?erent types heat exchanger mini-channel heat exchanger ?nds wide application in engineering ?elds.Flow maldistribution is a phenomenon where the distribution of ?ow is not uniform in all the channel due to some defects in geometry,unhealthy header design,leakage,etc.even some channel in the heat exchanger may have back?ow and some does not ?ow at all.Due to the maldistribution,there is a decrease in the e?ciency of the heat exchanger.Present research focuses on to know the maldistribution when more nos of channels were using tracer analysis in ANSYS FLUENT .Tracer analysis is carried out in two channels with ideal case and the result was validated with the theoretical analysis.With the help of the tracer analysis one can ?nd residence time distribution,Mach number and based on the Mach number the Maldistribution e?ect can be known.Some simple cases of Mini-channel were modeled with maldistribution;results show that with maldistribution heat transfer decreases.