Water, Air Emissions, and Cost Impacts of Air-Cooled Microturbines for Combined Cooling, Heating, and Power Systems： A Case Study in the Atlanta Region

The increasing pace of urbanization means that cities and global organizations are looking for ways to increase energy efficiency and reduce emissions. Combined cooling, heating, and power （CCHP） systems have the potential to improve the energy generation efficiency of a city or urban region by providing energy for heating, cooling, and electricity simultaneously. The purpose of this study is to estimate the water consumption for energy generation use, carbon dioxide （CO2） and NOx emissions, and economic impact of implementing CCHP systems for five generic building types within the Atlanta metropolitan region, under various operational scenarios following the building thermal （heating and cooling） demands. Operating the CCHP system to follow the hourly thermal demand reduces CO2 emissions for most building types both with and without net metering. The system can be economically beneficial for all building types depending on the price of natural gas, the implementation of net metering, and the cost structure assumed for the CCHP system. The greatest reduction in water consumption for energy production and NOx emissions occurs when there is net metering and when the system is operated to meet the maximum yearly thermal demand, although this scenario also results in an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and, in some cases, cost. CCHP systems are more economical for medium office, large office, and multifamilv residential buildings.

Numerical simulation of heat transfer and flow of cooling air in triangular wavy fin channels

Numerical computation models of air cooling heat transfer and flow behaviors in triangular wavy fin channels(TWFC) were established with structural parameters of fins considered.The air side properties of heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop are displayed with variable structural parameters of fins and inlet velocities of cooling air.Within the range of simulation,TWFC has the best comprehensive performance when inlet velocity vin=4-10 m/s.Compared with those of straight fins,the simulation results reveal that the triangular wavy fin channels are of higher heat transfer performances especially with the fin structural parameters of fin-height Fh=9.0 mm,fin-pitch Fp=2.5-3.0 mm,fin-wavelength λ=14.0-17.5 mm and fin-wave-amplitude A=1.0-1.2 mm.The correlations of both heat transfer factor and friction factor are presented,and the deviations from the experimental measurements are within 20%.

Decoupled thermal–hydraulic analysis of an air-cooled separated heat pipe for spent fuel pools under natural convection

An investigation of the decoupled thermal–hydraulic analysis of a separated heat pipe spent fuel pool passive cooling system(SFS)is essential for practical engineering applications.Based on the principles of thermal and mass balance,this study decoupled the heat transfer processes in the SFS.In accordance with the decoupling conditions,we modeled the spent fuel pool of the CAP1400 pressurized water reactor in Weihai and used computational fluid dynamics to explore the heat dissipation capacity of the SFS under different air temperatures and wind speeds.The results show that the air-cooled separated heat pipe radiator achieved optimal performance at an air temperature of 10℃ or wind speed of 8 m/s.Fitted equations for the equivalent thermal conductivity of the separated heat pipes with the wind speed and air temperature we obtained according to the thermal resistance network model.This study is instructive for the actual operation of an SFS.

Experimental Investigation of the Cooling Capacity of Gaseous Carbon Dioxide in Free Jet Expansion for Use in Portable Air-Cooling Systems

This paper investigates the possibility of using the free expansion of gaseous CO2 in portable air-cooling systems. The cooling capacity of the gaseous CO2 free jet expansion was calculated using three different approaches and the results showed that the simplified calculations would give approximated cooling values with an 11.6% maximum error. The mass flow rate, upstream pressure and cooling capacity of the gaseous CO2 decreased with time. A maximum 48.5 watts of cooling was recorded at minute 4 and a minimum value of 10.4 watts at the end of the test. The drop in cooling capacity is due to the evaporation of the liquid CO2 inside the small cylinder which cools the two-phase CO2 mixture and causes a pressure drop (from 6 MPa to 2.97 MPa), which also affects the mass flow rate of gaseous CO2 exiting the orifice (from 0.56 g/s to 0.24 g/s). If this cooling technique is to be considered in portable compact-cooling systems, the mass, pressure and cooling capacity drop with time must be solved. One of the solutions could be to cover the cylinder with a heating coat to compensate for the heat absorbed by the evaporation of the liquid CO2.

Efficiency of Photovoltaic Modules Using Different Cooling Methods: A Comparative Study

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the efficiency of a photovoltaic module using different cooling methods. The performance of the PV panels under different cooling techniques for the same operational conditions is explained. A special test rig was designed and installed in the Faculty of Engineering Technology, East Amman. All operating key variables such as solar radiation intensity, ambient and module temperatures using calibrated devices were measured and recorded as well as the electrical output. The present experiments results showed that the electrical efficiency of the tested PV panels is improved significantly when it was cooled. However, the best improvement obtained when a nanofluid (0.04% wt TiO2/water) is used as a cooling medium, while the PV panel cooled by using Aluminum rectangular fins showed the lowest efficiency improvement. Such results including the comparative analysis (under local operating conditions prevailing in Jordan) are in agreement with literature and could be useful for researchers and developers of solar power generation.

Experimental Study of Jet Nanofluids Impingement System for Cooling Computer Processing Unit

An experimental investigation of the jet nanofluids impingement heat transfer characteristics of mini-channel heat sink for cooling computer processing unit of personal computer is performed. The experiments are tested under the real personal computer operating conditions: no load and full load conditions. The experiments are performed for the following ranges of the parameters: coolant flow rate varies from 0.008 to 0.020 kg/s, the nozzle diameter is set to 1.00, 1.40, 1.80 mm, the distance nozzle-to-fins tip is 2.00 mm, the channel width of the mini-channel heat sink is 1.00 mm. The nanofluids with suspending of TiO2 particles in base fluid are used as a working fluids. It was observed that the average CPU temperatures obtained from the jet nanofluids impingement cooling system are 3.0%, 6.25% lower than those from the jet liquid impingement and from the conventional liquid cooling systems, respectively. However, this cooling system requires higher energy consumption.

Experimental Verification of Model for Liquid-Cooled Staggered Pin Fin Heat Sinks with Top Bypass Flow

Pressure drops and heat transfer over staggered pin fin heat sinks with top bypass flow were experimentally evaluated. The authors considered liquid-cooling applications because there were few data available comparing to air-cooling applications. Empirical equations to predict heat transfer on the endwall were developed by obtaining experimental data on the copper base plate with acrylic pins. A new model for predicting pressure drops and heat transfer over staggered pin fin heat sinks with top bypass flow based on mass, momentum, and energy conservation within the two control volumes is proposed. The first control volume in the model is located within the finned area, and the second is located in the gap between the tip of the pins and the flow channel. This model combines two conditions according to the boundary-layer thickness. A comparison between experimental and calculated results revealed that dimensionless pressure drops and the Nusselt number could be predicted within 30% error for the former and 50% error for the latter.

Thermal Analysis of Melting Occurring Inside a Finned Rectangular Enclosure Equipped with Discrete Pulsed Protruding Heat Sources

This paper numerically investigates the effect of the location of a horizontal fin on the melting of a phase change material(PCM)inside a rectangular enclosure heated by multiple discrete pulsed protruding heat sources.The fin and the phase change material filling the enclosure store the thermal energy extracted from the heat sources,in sensible and latent forms.The heat sources are assumed to simulate electronic components undergoing a superheating technical issue.By extracting heat from the electronics,the PCM plays the role of a heat sink.To analyze the thermal behavior and predict the cooling performance of the proposed cooling system,we derive a nonlinear mathematical model based on mass,momentum and energy conservation laws.Several numerical investigations are conducted to quantify the influence of the fin position on the thermal behavior and the cooling performance of the heat sink.Predictions include the transient maximum temperature occurring inside the heat sources and the liquid volume.A comparison between our numerical results and experimental data selected from the literature shows a good agreement.The main conclusion is that the presence of the fin leads to a slight increase in the melting time.

Air Cooling of Mini-Channel Heat Sink in Electronic Devices

Heat transfer experiments were conducted to investigate the thermal performance of air cooling through mini-channel heat sink with various configurations. Two types of channels have been used, one has a rectangular cross section area of 5 × 18 mm2 and the other is triangular with dimension of 5 × 9 mm2. Four channels of each configuration have been etched on copper block of 40 mm width,30 mm height, and 200 mm length. The measurements were performed in steady state with air flow rates of 0.002 - 0.005 m3/s, heating powers of 80 - 200 W and channel base temperatures of 48°C, 51°C, 55°C and 60°C. The results showed that the heat transfer to air stream is increased with increasing both of air mass flow rate and channel base temperature. The rectangular channels have better thermal performance than trian- gular ones at the same conditions. Analytical fin approach of 1-D and 2-D model were used to predict the heat transfer rate and outlet air temperature from channels heat sink. Theoretical results have been compared with experimental data. The predicted values for outlet air temperatures using the two models agree well with a deviation less than ±10%. But for the heat transfer data, the deviation is about +30% to –60% for 1-D model, and –5% to –80% for 2-D model. The global Nusselt number of the present experimental data is empirically correlated as with accuracy of ±20% for and compared with other literature correlations.

Distribution optimization of circulating water in air-cooled heat exchangers for a typical indirect dry cooling system on the basis of entransy dissipation

The flow and heat transfer of air-cooled heat exchangers play important roles in the performance of indirect dry cooling systems in power plants,so it is of benefit to the design and operation of a typical indirect dry cooling system to optimize the thermo-flow characteristics of air-cooled heat exchangers.The entransy dissipation method is applied to the performance optimization of air-cooled heat exchangers in this paper.Two irreversible heat transfer processes in air-cooled heat exchangers,the heat transfer between circulating water and cooling air and the mixing of circulating water,are taken into account and analyzed by means of the entransy dissipation method.The total entransy dissipation rate,which connects the geometrical parameters of air-cooled heat exchanger sectors and the heat capacity rates of the fluids to the heat flow rate in every sector,is obtained.Based on the mathematical relation and the conditional extremum method,an optimization equation group is derived,by which the air-cooled heat exchanger with known air-side parameters is optimized,showing that the entransy dissipation based optimization approach can contribute to the distribution optimization of circulating water in air-cooled heat exchangers of a typical indirect dry cooling system.

Correlations Based on CFD and Their Applications in Optimization for Staggered and Parallel Plate Fin Heatsinks

Both parallel and staggered plate fin arrays have shown promise for use inhigh performance heatsinks regard of its individual manufacturing costs. The geometrical andoperational parameters are very important to their cooling performance as heatsinks in practicalapplications. Fluent 5.0 commercial CFD (computational fluid dynamic) code is used to simulate theflow and heat transfer of those heatsinks of different realistic parameters. Based on thosesimulations, two correlations, concerning Nusselt number and friction factor as the functions ofgeometrical and operational parameters, FB (fin-base area ratio), PR' (ratio of spanwise pitch tolengthwise pitch) and Re, were developed. From the both, the performance comparisons for optimizinggeometrical and operational parameters of a fixed dimension heatsink are shown at constant pumpingpower and constant thermal resistance. Several optimized parameters were obtained can out performthe staggered ones.

Influences of Lateral Double-Layered Deflectors on Cooling Performance of Air-Cooled Condenser

The cooling performance of air-cooled condenser(ACC)is susceptible to adverse impacts of ambient winds.In this work,three kinds of lateral double-layered deflectors installed under the ACC platform are proposed to weaken the unfavorable effects of cross winds.Through CFD simulation methods,the main parameters of thermo-flow performances of a 2×660 MW direct dry cooling system are obtained,by which it can be concluded that the deflectors can effectively reduce the inlet air temperatures while enhance the mass flow rates of upwind fans due to the guiding effect,especially at high wind speeds,while the improvement of cooling capacity of ACCs in the 0°wind direction is weak.The inclined-vertical deflectors are superior to others in performance improvement of ACCs for all cases,which can reduce the turbine back pressure by 12.15%when the wind speed is 12 m/s,so they can be applied to the performance enhancement of ACCs under windy conditions in practical engineering.

Heat Transfer Characteristics of Square Micro Pin Fins under Natural Convection

In order to comply with the recent demand for downsizing of the electric equipment, the minia- turization and the improvement in heat transfer performance of a heat sink under natural air-cooling are increasingly required. This paper describes the experimental and numerical investigations of heat sinks with miniature/micro pins and the effect of the pin size, pin height and the number of pins on heat transfer characteristics of heat sinks. Five types of basic heat sink models are investigated in this study. The whole heat transfer area of heat sinks having the different pin size, pin height and the number of pins respectively is kept constant. From a series of experiments and numerical analyses, it has been clarified that the heat sink temperature rises with increase in the number of pins. That is, the heat sink with miniaturized fine pins showed almost no effect on the heat transfer enhancement. This is because of the choking phenomenon occurred in the air space among the pin fins. Reflecting these results, it is confirmed that the heat transfer coefficient reduces with miniaturization of pins. Concerning the effects of the heat transfer area on the heat sink performance, almost the same tendency has been observed in other three series of large surface area, that is, higher pin height. Furthermore as a result of studying non-dimensional convection heat transfer performance, it was found that the relation between the Nusselt number (Nu) and the Rayleight number (Ra) is given by Nu = 0.16 Ra0.52.

电力电子器件用液冷针翅散热器的研究进展

随着大功率电力电子器件(如绝缘栅双极型晶体管,IGBT)轻量化、小型化和集成化的发展需求,其功率密度越来越大,导致其热流密度越来越高,亟需高效散热来满足其使用要求。传统空气冷却散热器结构简单、使用方便,但是散热能力较低,难以满足高热流密度的散热需求,目前主要采用液体冷却散热器,其中液冷针翅散热器是最常用的高效散热器。本文介绍了液冷针翅散热器的结构、液体工质、材料和制造等方面的研究进展,重点分析了液冷针翅散热器的流体通道结构、针翅结构对流动和传热性能的影响,并给出了液冷针翅散热器的发展建议。

Thermo-Flow Performances for the Main-Auxiliary Integrated Natural Draft Dry Cooling System

Recently,natural draft dry cooling system with the main-auxiliary integrated air-cooled heat exchangers in the up and lower layers,has drawn attention to the electric power industry.This research firstly develops two physical models for the integrated cooling system,namely Case A and Case B.In Case A,the main air-cooled heat exchanger is arranged in the upper layer and the auxiliary air-cooled heat exchanger arranged in the lower layer,while in Case B,the two heat exchanger systems are arranged in the opposite way.And then,directing at the engineering TMCR and TRL 1 working conditions,the unit-local-overall thermo-flow characteristics of Case A and Case B are obtained and compared by numerical simulation.The findings show that,for the auxiliary air-cooled exchanger,Case A has obviously higher cooling performances than Case B,with the difference varying from 5.46%to 7.55%.Whereas,for the main air-cooled exchanger,Case B shows the recovered cooling performances,with the difference changing from 1.15%to 2.99%.Case A is preferably recommended to the engineering application in consideration of more strict cooling demand of the auxiliary cooling system.Conclusively,this research will provide some theoretical guidelines for the design and construction of the main-auxiliary integrated natural draft dry cooling system.

2-Dimensional CFD Simulation and Correlation Development for Optimization of Fin Heatsinks in Electronic Cooling

CFD has penetrated into the field of electronic cooling for some time. Both parallel and staggered plate fin heatsinks are widely used in modern computers. This paper presents the ways to make most use of CFD in optimization design of those heatsinks: the flow and heat transfer of staggered and parallel plate fm heatsinks of various geometry were simulated by using Fluent 5.0 commercial CFD code. Based on 60 different simulation solutions, two correlations, concerning Nusselt number and friction factor as the functions of geometrical and operational parameters of the heatsinks were developed. The presentation parameter examination was also performed by comparing the numerical solutions with the analytical solutions of parallel plate arrays, showing that the correct parameters are used in the correlations.

660MW锅炉水冷壁管道泄漏分析

火电厂锅炉材料失效泄漏是机组非计划停运的主要原因之一,导致因材料失效而泄漏的原因错综复杂,但鳍片焊接引起的失效泄漏相对较少。以某电厂660MW机组锅炉侧墙垂直水冷壁泄漏为基础,通过金属材料宏观分析、力学分析、金相检测等方法对失效管道进行试验,并结合现场实际情况分析泄漏原因。试验结果表明:本次管道泄漏为管道鳍片拉裂,裂纹扩展至水冷壁管道,导致管道在高温、高压下爆管泄漏。

Sandwich Structure Design of a Cooling Fin for Battery Modules Against Impact Loads

Lithium-ion batteries(LIBs)are widely employed in electric vehicles owing to their high power density,long cycle life,and environmental friendliness.However,LIBs are hazardous in the event of a crash,leading to thermal runaway.In this study,the basic structure of a battery module is analyzed to improve the crashworthiness of LIBs.A simplified finite element model of the battery module structure,which is a battery unit composed of two pouch cells and a cooling fin,is set up and verified by conducting module-level simulations.The simulation results reveal that the cooling fin in the battery module has the potential to absorb energy.Six sandwich configurations are introduced to modify the cooling fin.With a unidirection-ally stiffened double hull USDH structure serving as an example,a parametric analysis is conducted,demonstrating that the sandwich height does not influence the areal density;a small height of 3 mm can make the material work sufficiently while avoiding early buckling of the structure.Further,the crashworthiness of different sandwich configurations with the same areal density and height is compared,leading to three deformation modes.USDH and circular core structures are found to be able to effectively reduce the peak force and improve the energy absorption ability.

单管多翅片排管蒸发器结构优化的数值模拟研究

为解决单管双翅片排管蒸发器翅片效率低、降温速率慢和原材料消耗量大的问题,通过模拟分析翅片间夹角对传热性能的影响,得到单管双翅片和四翅片的降温时间、温度场、速度场、传热系数和制冷量指标。结果表明,四翅片排管蒸发器下部翅片夹角越大,传热效果越好。单管四翅片排管蒸发器1的传热系数最大,相对于单管双翅片排管蒸发器提高了13.4%;单管四翅片排管蒸发器1的单位管材制冷量最高,相对与单管双翅片排管蒸发器提高了38.6%。研究为单管多翅片蒸发器结构优化提供了支撑。

Application of machine learning to develop a real-time air-cooled condenser monitoring platform using thermofluid simulation data

A data-driven surrogate model is proposed for a 64-cell air-cooled condenser system at a power plant.The surro-gate model was developed using thermofluid simulation data from an existing detailed 1-D thermofluid network simulation model.The thermofluid network model requires a minimum of 20 min to solve for a single set of in-puts.With operating conditions fluctuating constantly,performance predictions are required in shorter intervals,leading to the development of a surrogate model.Simulation data covered three operating scopes across a range of ambient air temperatures,inlet steam mass flow rates,number of operating cells,and wind speeds.The surrogate model uses multi-layer perceptron deep neural networks in the form of a binary classifier network to avoid ex-trapolation from the simulation dataset,and a regression network to provide performance predictions,including the steady-state backpressure,heat rejections,air mass flowrates,and fan motor powers on a system level.The integrated surrogate model had an average relative error of 0.3%on the test set,while the binary classifier had a 99.85%classification accuracy,indicating sufficient generalisation.The surrogate model was validated using site-data covering 10 days of operation for the case-study ACC system,providing backpressure predictions for all 1967 input samples within a few seconds of compute time.Approximately 93.5%of backpressure predictions were within±6%of the recorded backpressures,indicating sufficient accuracy of the surrogate model with a significant decrease in compute time.