Abstract
A generalized mean temperature difference (GMTD) method for heat exchangers is proposed. In the analysis of the performance of heat exchangers logarithmic temperature difference (LMTD) method has been widely used. This method, however, limits its application to those heating media with constant physical property. In turn GMTD method allows analysis with physical property distributed in an entire heat exchanger. Temperature profiles of the heat exchanger taken as function of heat load in place of axial position, mean temperature difference is evaluated numerically. It is mathematically demonstrated that LMTD method is an extremity of the GMTD method in the case of constant physical property. The GMTD method is applied to a hot water supplier with supercritical carbon dioxide as a heating media which is attracting attention as energy saving tactics. The hot water supplier operates under the condition of pseudo critical point of carbon dioxide where specific heat behaves anomaly. Incorporating GMTD method averaged overall heat transfer coefficient and subsequently formula of local Nusselt number are successfully derived for microchannel heat exchanger while formal application of LMTD method is found to give poor results i.e. two times less value with a larger error. This proves the validity of GMTD method.
