Two-dimensional numerical investigations of the fluid flow and heat transfer have been carried out for the laminar flow of the louvered fin-plate heat exchanger, designed to work as an air-source heat pump evaporator. The transferred heat and the pressure drop predicted by simulation have been compared with the corresponding experimental data taken from the literature. Two dimensional analyses of the louvered fins with varying geometry have been conducted. Simulations have been performed for different geometries with varying louver pitch, louver angle and different louver blade number. Constant inlet air temperature and varying velocity ranging from 2 to 8 m/s was assumed in the numerical experiments. The air-side performance is evaluated by calculating the temperature and the pressure drop ratio. Efficiency curves are obtained that can be used to select optimum louver geometry for the selected inlet parameters. A total of 363 different cases of various fin geometry for 7 different air velocities were investigated. The maximum heat transfer improvement interpreted in terms of the maximum efficiency has been obtained for the louver angle of 16° and the louver pitch of 1.35 mm. The presented results indicate that varying louver geometry might be a convenient way of enhancing performance of heat exchangers.

The role of the addition of nitrogen to the discharge plasma of CO lasers on thermodynamic properties and composition of the laser active medium is discussed here. It is shown that nitrogen addition improves laser characteristics and changes the composition of the laser active medium. The addition of nitrogen significantly decreases CO dissociation level and concentrations of C atoms created in plasma-chemical reactions of laser discharge.

The current paper presents the experimental validation of the generalized model of the two-phase thermosyphon loop. The generalized model is based on mass, momentum, and energy balances in the evaporators, rising tube, condensers and the falling tube. The theoretical analysis and the experimental data have been obtained for a new designed variant. The variant refers to a thermosyphon loop with both minichannels and conventional tubes. The thermosyphon loop consists of an evaporator on the lower vertical section and a condenser on the upper vertical section. The one-dimensional homogeneous and separated two-phase flow models were used in calculations. The latest minichannel heat transfer correlations available in literature were applied. A numerical analysis of the volumetric flow rate in the steady-state has been done. The experiment was conducted on a specially designed test apparatus. Ultrapure water was used as a working fluid. The results show that the theoretical predictions are in good agreement with the measured volumetric flow rate at steady-state.

In this paper, effect of Hall currents on the thermal instability of couple-stress fluid permeated with dust particles has been considered. Following the linearized stability theory and normal mode analysis, the dispersion relation is obtained. For the case of stationary convection, dust particles and Hall currents are found to have destabilizing effect while couple stresses have stabilizing effect on the system. Magnetic field induced by Hall currents has stabilizing/destabilizing effect under certain conditions. It is found that due to the presence of Hall currents (hence magnetic field), oscillatory modes are produced which were non-existent in their absence.

The paper presents four 1-dimensional models of thermal resistance of walls in a heat exchanger with rectangular minichannels. The first model is the simplest one, with a single wall separating two fluids. The second model of the so called equivalent wall takes into account total volume of intermediate walls between layers of minichannels and of side walls of minichannels. The next two more complicated models take separately into account thermal resistance of these walls. In these two models side walls are treated as fins. The results of models comparison are presented. It is shown that thermal resistance may be neglected for metal walls but it should be taken into account for the walls made of plastics. For the case of non-neglected wall thermal resistance the optimum wall thickness was derived. Minichannel heat exchangers made of plastic are larger than those built of metal, but are significantly cheaper. It makes possible to use of such exchangers in inexpensive microscale ORC installations.

This study is focused on experimental investigation of selected type of brazed plate heat exchanger (PHEx). The Wilson plot approach was applied in order to estimate heat transfer coefficients for the PHEx passages. The main aim of the paper was to experimentally check ability of several correlations published in the literature to predict heat transfer coefficients by comparison experimentally obtained data with appropriate predictions. The results obtained revealed that Hausen and Dittus-Boelter correlations underestimated heat transfer coefficient for the tested PHEx by an order of magnitude. The Aspen Plate code overestimated heat transfer coefficient by about 50%, while Muley-Manglik correlation overestimated it from 1% to 25%, dependent on the value of Reynolds number and hot or cold liquid side.

The results of investigations conducted on the prototype of vapour driven micro-CHP unit integrated with a gas boiler are presented. The system enables cogeneration of heat and electric energy to cover the energy demand of a household. The idea of such system is to produce electricity for own demand or for selling it to the electric grid – in such situation the system user will became the prosumer. A typical commercial gas boiler, additionally equipped with an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) module based on environmentally acceptable working fluid can be regarded as future generation unit. In the paper the prototype of innovative domestic cogenerative ORC system, consisting of a conventional gas boiler and a small size axial vapour microturbines (in-house designed for ORC and the commercially available for Rankine cycle (RC)), evaporator and condenser were scrutinised. In the course of study the fluid working temperatures, rates of heat, electricity generation and efficiency of the whole system were obtained. The tested system could produce electricity in the amount of 1 kWe. Some preliminary tests were started with water as working fluid and the results for that case are also presented. The investigations showed that domestic gas boiler was able to provide the saturated/superheated ethanol vapour (in the ORC system) and steam (in the RC system) as working fluids.

The paper discusses thermodynamic phenomena accompanying the flow of gas in a slotted seal. The analysis of the gas flow has been described based on an irreversible adiabatic transformation. A model based on the equation of total enthalpy balance has been proposed. The iterative process of the model aims at obtaining such a gas temperature distribution that will fulfill the continuity equation. The model allows for dissipation of the kinetic energy into friction heat by making use of the Blasius equation to determine the friction coefficient. Within the works, experimental research has been performed of the gas flow in a slotted seal of slot height 2 mm. Based on the experimental data, the equation of local friction coefficient was modified with a correction parameter. This parameter was described with the function of pressure ratio to obtain a mass flow of the value from the experiment. The reason for taking up of this problem is the absence of high accuracy models for calculating the gas flow in slotted seals. The proposed model allows an accurate determination of the mass flow in a slotted seal based on the geometry and gas initial and final parameters.