An Experimental Study on the Performance of Plastic Plate Heat Exchanger

Aluminum plate heat exchanger, rotary wheel heat exchanger, and heat pipe heat exchanger have been used (or ventilation heat recovery in the air-conditioning system. The purpose of this research is to develop high efficiency plastic plate heat exchanger which can substitute aluminum plate heat exchanger. Because thermal conductivity of plastic is quite small compared to that of aluminum, various heat transfer enhancement techniques are applied in the design of plastic plates. Five types of heat exchanger model are designed and manufactured, which are plate type, plate-fin type, turbulent promoter type, corrugate type, and dimple type. Thermal performance and pressure loss of each heat exchangers are measured in various operating conditions, and compared each other. Test results show that heat transfer performance of corrugate type, turbulent promoter type, and dimple type are increases about , , and at the equivalent fan power compared to those of plate type, respectively. On the other hand, the heat transfer performance of plate-fin type decreases because fins can not play their own role.