Experimental Research on Plate Heat Exchanger in OTEC System

A plate heat exchanger suitable for ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) system was designed and developed to carry out the theoretical analysis and experimental research. An experimental OTEC plant was constructed to test the performance of the heat exchanger. The heat transfer characteristics of plate heat exchangers with different heat fluxes were studied. At the same time, the transient operating characteristics of the plate heat exchanger and the effect of working fluid flow on the pressure drop were obtained. Combined with the experimental data, dimensionless parameter empirical correlation between heat transfer characteristics and heat flux and the correlation between friction coefficient, Reynolds number and reduced pressure were obtained. The errors were within 20%. The results show that the heat exchanger effectiveness increases with the rise of heat flux under the experimental operating conditions. When the heat flux is greater than 3 kW/m(2), the increasing extent of heat exchanger effectiveness becames slow. The pressure drop of heat exchanger increases with the growth of working fluid flow rate. When working fluid flow rate is more than 6 m(3)/h, the increasing range of pressure drop in heat exchanger is larger.