Performance of Aluminum and Carbon Foams for Air Side Heat Transfer Augmentation

Abstract

The air side heat transfer performance of three aluminum foam samples and three modified carbon foam samples are examined for comparison with multilouvered fins often found in compact heat exchangers. The aluminum foam samples have a bulk density of 216 kg/m3 with pore sizes of 0.5, 1, and 2 mm. The modified carbon foam samples have bulk densities of 284, 317, and 400 kg/m3 and machined flow passages of 3.2 mm in diameter. The samples were placed in a forced convection arrangement using a foil heater as the heat source and ambient air as the sink. A constant heat flux of 9.77 kW/m2 is applied throughout the experiments with the mean air velocity ranging from 1 to 6 m/s as the control parameter. The steady volume-averaged momentum equation and a two-equation nonequilibrium heat transfer model are employed to extract the volumetric heat transfer coefficients. Pressure drop measurements are correlated with the Darcy–Forcheimer relation. Empirical heat transfer correlations for the aluminum and carbon foam samples are provided. Using a hypothetical heat exchanger considering only the thermal resistance between the ambient air and the outer tube wall, the air side performance for each sample is modeled based on the local heat transfer coefficients and friction factors obtained from experiments. The performance of each sample is evaluated based on a coefficient of performance (COP, defined as the ratio of the total heat removed to the electrical input of the blower), compactness factor (CF, defined as the total heat removed per unit volume), and power density (PD, defined as the total heat removed per unit mass). Results show the carbon foam samples provide significant improvement in CF but the COP and PD are considerably lower than that for comparable multilouvered fin heat exchangers.