On the Thermal Performance of a Microparallel Channels Heat Exchanger

Abstract

This paper presents the experimental and theoretical analysis of a micro heat exchanger designed for the waste heat recovery from a high concentration photovoltaic (HCPV) system. A test bench was built to analyze the thermal behavior of a heat exchanger targeted to work in a similar condition of an existing HCPV panel. A high power heater was encapsulated inside a copper cartridge, covered by thermal insulation, leading to dissipated heat fluxes around 0.6MW/m2, representative of the heat flux over the solar cell within the HCPV module. The experimental campaign employed water as the coolant fluid and was performed for three different mass flow rates. An infrared camera was used to nonintrusively measure the temperature field over the micro heat exchanger external surface, while thermocouples were placed at the contact between the heat exchanger and the heater, and at the water inlet and outlet ports. In the theoretical analysis, a hybrid numerical–analytical treatment is implemented, combining the numerical simulation through the COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS finite elements code for the micro heat exchanger, and the analytical solution of a lumped-differential formulation for the electrical heater cartridge, offering a substantial computational cost reduction. Such computational simulations of the three-dimensional conjugated heat transfer problem were critically compared to the experimental results and also permitted to inspect the adequacy of a theoretical correlation based on a simplified prescribed heat flux model without conjugation effects. It has been concluded that the conjugated heat transfer problem modeling should be adopted in future design and optimization tasks. The analysis demonstrates the enhanced heat transfer achieved by the microthermal system and confirms the potential in reusing the recovered heat from HCPV systems in a secondary process.