Novel Heat Exchangers with Enhanced Surface

75454-Current heat exchangers use a conventional fin-tube design, which results in a big volume and low efficiency of thermal management systems. This project will develop an innovative technology that enables compact microchannel heat exchangers with enhanced heat transfer area to be fabricated from any material (including metals, ceramics intermetallics and composites). The thermal efficiency of the microchannel heat exchangers, which combine the advantages of microchannel and foam structures in one device, will be significantly higher than that of traditional ones. In Phase I, the critical processing steps will be established, and a preliminary characterization of the produced heat exchangers will be performed. The weight and volume per unit of the thermal energy also will be established. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: Lightweight, compact, high-performance heat exchangers should find use in thermal management of vehicles, environmental restoration, global climate control, and industrial chemical processing. Other applications include man-portable heating and cooling systems, distributed space conditioning of buildings, water heating, and distributed power generation.