Exergy Analysis of a Gas to Liquid Compact Heat Exchanger as an Intercooler in Various Working Conditions

Exergy analysis is a method for recognizing the value and type of system availability variation with regard to the surrounding environment. It also helps to find how macroscopic properties of the system change during a process. By exergy analysis, the proportion of each process in the internal availability transmission and the places of useful energy loss in the system can be determined. In this research, the energy and exergy analysis and the parametric study of a gas to liquid compact heat exchanger (737/0-32/11–SR type) in various working conditions are accomplished, based on experimental findings. For this purpose, the appropriate model for the heat exchanger is achieved by means of theoretical and experimental thermodynamic relations, based on geometrical characteristics.  The estimation of heat exchanger’s performance in the presented model is based on the ε-Ntu method. In this study, various working conditions are determined by changing some parameters like temperature, pressure and volumetric flow rate of air and mass flow rate of water. The variation range of these parameters is chosen to manifest an intercooler working conditions. For the assessment of system performance, energy analysis is performed by definition and evaluation of parameters such as effectiveness and pressure drop coefficient. Also, for exergy analysis parameters such as exergic efficiency and irreversibility coefficient are considered. The presented results focus on how the variation of working conditions affects the characteristic parameters of the compact heat exchanger.