Heat Transfer Characteristics of Heat Exchanger Incorporating a Heater and a Fluid Way of Heat Medium for Heat Storage Container

This paper describes a new heat exchanger incorporating an inside heater and a fluid way of heat medium in the heat storage container. The heat exchanger can transfer heat from the inside heater to the heat-storage material and from the heat-storage material to the heat-transfer medium in a fluid way. Also, the inside heater can directly heat the heat-transfer medium when the heat discharge rate from heat-storage material to heat-transfer medium decreases. An elementary experimental apparatus was made to establish the thermal design method for such a heat exchanger and heat-transfer experiments were conducted. It was found that the heat transfer rate in the fluid way is large, about 1.6 or 2 times the value calculated with the conventional equation for forced-convection heat transfer. Also, the present experimental data were correlated as a function of Reynolds number in the region of Reynolds number from 300 to 5000.