Optimal design of plate-fin heat exchanger for improving core volume and heat transfer performance

Since its high compactness and heat transfer performance, plate-fin heat exchanger (PFHE) is widely used in the aspects of industry. For high productivity of industrial plants, it is important to determine the design of PFHE based on the requirements such as small core volume, high heat transfer rate and low pressure drop. In this paper, design optimization of PFHE for small core volume and high heat transfer rate is carried out. Seven parameters to determine the PFHE such as core width, core length, the number of fin layers, fin frequency and fin thickness are taken as design variables. Since high pressure drop results in high power consumption, pressure drop is handled as design constraint. Therefore, straight fin and perforated fin are considered for fin types. Sequential approximate optimization is adopted to optimize the design of PFHE in a small number of simulations. Through the result, the trade-off between the core volume and the heat transfer rate is clarified.