Large Scale Capillary Based Plastic Heat Exchangers

The first measurements of the capillary based heat exchangers are just several years old. Moreover the used pilot heat exchangers had just negligible heat transfer area generated by 10 fibres with diameter of 0.3 mm and length of 100 mm. It was therefore a relatively easy task to make sure that the relevant heat transfer can achieve the optimal conditions. However, industrial applications require large heat exchangers to make their operation feasible. If a capillary heat exchanger has 1000 - 30,000 fibres, each fibre is 600 (or 3000) mm long then it is a very difficult task to achieve the optimal conditions of heat transfer e.g. by making sure that each fibre takes an optimal part in the heat transfer. An important additional requirement is that the cost of the plastic heat exchanger must be low, preferably very low, if compared to other types of heat exchangers. There is no substantial industrial know-how. Therefore common sense reasoning is the main source of ideas. To demonstrate problems related to e.g. potting the following photographs are given to demonstrate the middle part and one end of the 30,000 fibres ponytail.