A technique for thermal design of a heat exchanger with porous inserts

A technique of designing a heat exchanger with porous inserts that is the development of the classical method for thermal design of recuperative finned heat exchangers is presented. A criterion equation was suggested to calculate the effective length of a rib, which is equivalent to a porous insert; the given equation takes into account the influence of the heat carriers flow regime, their thermo-physical properties, geometrical and thermo-physical parameters of porous inserts. Using a hot water calorifer as an example, we compared the thermal design techniques as well as the mass-dimensional indicators and heat and power effectiveness of the heat exchanger with porous inserts with similar characteristics of a standard plate-type one.