Design Study of a Brazed Plate Heat Exchanger Condenser Through Two-Phase Flow Analysis

Abstract

This study was aimed at designing a condenser, as a component of the organic Rankine cycle system for ships. The condenser was manufactured through press molding to achieve a bent shape to enhance the heat transfer performance, considering the shape of the heat transfer plate used in a brazing plate heat exchanger. The heat transfer plate was made of copper-nickel alloy. The required heat transfer rate for the condenser was 110 kW, and the maximum number of layers was set as 25, considering the characteristics of high-temperature brazing. Computational fluid dynamics techniques were used to perform the thermal fluid analysis, based on the ANSYS CFX (v.18.1) commercial program. The heat transfer rate of the condenser was 4.96 kW for one layer (width and length of 0.224 and 0.7 m, respectively) of the heat transfer exchanger. The fin efficiency pertaining to the heat transfer plate was approximately 20%. The heat flow analysis for one layer of the heat exchanger plate indicated that the condenser with 25 layers of heat transfer plates could achieve a heat transfer rate of 110 kW.