Numerical Simulation of Heat Hydraulic Characteristics of the Plate-Type Heat-Exchanger

It is known that today the cooling system of efficient air compressors that allows us to cool both heated compressor parts and the produced compressed air releases the heat to the environment. This heat can be used for common good, for example for the domestic water heating. Available cooling systems can conventionally be divided into the two types, in particular the air cooling system and the water cooling system. In the case of water cooling system it is possible to use the plate-type heat exchanger. It is known that plate-type heat exchangers are very compact and have a low hydraulic resistance at simultaneously high heat-exchange intensity. Today, we have an ample amount of developed analytical methods used for the computation of heat exchange and hydrodynamics in the channels of plate-type heat exchangers and the thermal state of such heat exchangers; however we are lacking of the research done using the tools of CFD-simulation. The authors made an attempt to determine the heat load and the hydraulic resistance of the plate-type heat exchanger of a sectional type using the developed methods of CFD-simulation in the software environment of ANSYS-Fluent system. The simulation data were verified and compared with the computation data obtained using a known engineering technique used for the computation of the heat-hydraulic characteristics of plate-type heat exchangers. The research data can be used for the heat-exchange intensification assessment and for the analysis of the flow to improve the efficiency of the plate-type heat exchanger.