SOME FEATURES OF OPERATION AND THERMAL-HYDRAULIC TESTS OF PLATE HEAT EXCHANGERS

At present, plate heat exchangers (PHE) are used everywhere, starting from the housing and utilities sector to nuclear power. However, there are no standard methods for heat and hydraulic calculations for plate heat exchangers. That is why the manufacturer uses special software to select heat exchangers for a particular task. And often even engineers have no access to the code and algorithms of these programs. Thus, correctness of such calculations is questionable, especially for the unusual operating modes of heat exchangers. To solve these issues, it is necessary to carry out thermal-hydraulic tests of plate heat exchangers from diff erent companies, with subsequent comparative analysis and identifi cation of possible diffi culties in thermal-hydraulic calculations. In the course of this work, we proposed a test procedure for plate heat exchangers with the same fl ow rate along the circuits, simplifying the subsequent processing of the experimental data. This method is applicable for PHEs with an equal number of channels on their hot and cold sides. Using this method, 13 plate heat exchangers were tested at the KS10606 Complex test facility of JSC “NPO CKTI”. The results of experiments and analysis of the data provided by the PHE manufacturers showed no signifi cant diff erence in the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of plates of the same size of diff erent manufacturers. Presence of breathing eff ect in PHEs was confi rmed. Breathing eff ect is caused by elastic deformation of heat transfer plates in the presence of pressure diff erence between hot and cold sides of PHE. It is shown that this eff ect can signifi cantly aff ect the hydraulic resistance. The maximum observed diff erence between the hydraulic resistance coeffi cients in circuits with a lower and higher pressure was about 3.5 times. However, this eff ect is not typical of all plate heat exchangers.

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