A Model of a Buoyancy-Driven Heat Exchanger, with Implications for Optimal Design
This work provides a modeling framework for optimizing the design of buoyancy-driven heat exchangers, which is relevant for engineers in thermal systems design.
The paper introduces a first-principles model for a buoyancy-driven air-to-air heat exchanger, solving it numerically and asymptotically with excellent agreement, and studies the tradeoff between efficiency and air flow.
In this paper, we introduce a model for a buoyancy-driven, air-to-air heat exchanger. This model, derived from first principles, features a conservative boundary condition at inflow based on the compressible Bernoulli equation, and a dissipative boundary condition at outflow based on pressure continuity. We solve for the steady-state behavior numerically and asymptotically, with excellent agreement between the two, and we study the tradeoff between the efficiency and air flow predicted by the model.