Affordable Manufacturing for Compact Hybrid Carbon Liquid/Air Heat Exchanger

An affordable carbon composite core and manifold heat exchanger will be developed for high heat transfer rates with zero leakage between high and low pressure streams. The design will incorporate ease of manufacturing with a scalable assembly process that is production friendly. This innovative concept will use prefabricated, emphasizing waterjet cutting, plate-based composites to create a plate/fin and composite fluid tube construction. End-cap manifolds will be compression molded composite. For heat transfer regions, composite materials will be pitch-based graphite epoxy with fiber conductivities nominally 650 W/mK with an option for fiber at 1100 W/mK in critical thermal designs. Low-cost carbon-carbon with unique sealing technology will be used for a fluid channels. Exchanger design will be applicable to both graphite/epoxy and laminate/woven carbon-carbon systems. The carbon-graphite/epoxy exchanger developed in Phase 1 will be suitable for inlet temperatures up to 350°F and 80 psi. Weight will be reduced by >40% with an increase in heat rejection relative to baselined designs. Phase 2 will expand the design for exclusive use of carbon-carbon when service temperatures exceed 500°F. Analysis will be used for optimization. Phase 1 will build and test a complete exchanger prototype that will establish the production path carried into Phase 2.