LAUSR

Abstract Due to its resistance to high pressure, high efficiency and compactness, printed circuit heat exchangers have gained much attention as a potential pre-cooler for the supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle. At present, there is no study on the large-scale PCHE used as a pre-cooler for the supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle and the effects of inlet temperatures and mass flow rates of working fluids, especially the water on the cold side, on the thermal-hydraulic performance of the PCHE still need to be investigated. In the present study, a 100 kW class PCHE, which is used as one module of the full-scale MW class pre-cooler for the supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle application, has been investigated. The size of this module is 486 × 101 × 136 mm and has the same inlet conditions as that of the full-scale pre-cooler except the mass flow rate. Zigzag fins were chosen for both sides to attain high heat transfer performance and single banking was adopted. In the experiments, the SCO2 inlet Reynolds number and temperature varied from 31,157 to 52,806 and 363.4 to 383.4 K, respectively. For the water side, the inlet Reynolds number and temperature varied from 1084 to 1947 and 293.0 to 299.7 K, respectively. The effects of the inlet Reynolds number and temperature on heat transfer and pressure drop of the printed circuit heat exchanger were tested. The effectiveness of the printed circuit heat exchanger is also attained.