Simulation study of heat transfer characteristics of a biomimetic honeycomb CO2 gas cooler

CO2 air source heat pumps are widely used because of their advantages of energy saving, high efficiency and clean. Gas cooler is one of the key components of CO2 heat pump system, while its heat transfer effect will affect the energy efficiency of the whole system. In order to improve the heat transfer efficiency, a biomimetic honeycomb gas cooler is proposed in this paper, the steady-state simulation model of the biomimetic honeycomb gas cooler is established by using MATLAB software, and the reliability of the model is verified by literature data. In addition, the heat transfer performance of the biomimetic honeycomb gas cooler is compared with that of the tube-in-tube gas cooler. The results showed that, under the same working condition, compared with the tube-in-tube gas cooler, the outlet temperature of the biomimetic honeycomb gas cooler with 1st, 2nd and 3rd level increased by 9.7°C, 25.4°C and 27.3°C, and heat transfer can be increased by 55.5%, 205.4% and 220.6% respectively. This research is helpful to provide the reference for the design and optimization of this type of gas cooler, and is conducive to the popularization of CO2 air source heat pump.