A Study on the Factors Affecting the Performance of Plastic Plate Heat Exchanger

Plastic plate heat exchangers have many advantages over the conventional heat exchangers such as aluminum plate heat exchangers, rotary wheel heat exchangers and heat pipe heat exchangers which have been used for ventilation heat recovery in the air-conditioning systems. In the present study, pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics of plastic plate heat exchangers are investigated for various design parameters and operating conditions which affect the performance of the plastic plate heat exchangers. In flat plate type heat exchanger, material thickness and channel height of heat exchanger are considered, and corrugate size and heat transfer area are considered in case of corrugate type heat exchanger. Pressure drop and effectiveness of the corrugate type heat exchanger increase as the corrugate size decreases.