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3D printing heat exchanger


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Engineers use 3D printing technology to boost heat exchanger performance by 2000%

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A team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has used 3D printing technology to produce a next-generation ultra-compact heat exchanger, achieving performance increases of up to 2000%.

To enable the novel geometry, the engineers developed their own purpose-built 3D heat exchanger design software with topology optimization functionality. The program is designed specifically to optimize existing heat exchanger designs to maximize heat transfer while minimizing part weight, which could have major implications for industries such as energy, electronics, and aerospace.

“We developed shape optimization software to design a high-performance heat exchanger,” explains William King, professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering and co-leader of the study. “The software allows us to identity 3D designs that are significantly different and better than conventional designs.”

A rendering of the optimized 3D printed heat exchanger. Image via University of Illinois.

The need to advance heat exchangers

Heat exchangers are simply used to transfer thermal energy from point A to point B. They’re crucial in most major industries and are featured in almost every complex system that generates heat. This includes power generation systems, transportation, oil & gas processing, water desalination, and thermal management for consumer electronics.

With millions of heat exchangers in use out in the world today, their performance and efficiency have become more important than ever when it comes to global sustainability and reducing energy consumption. We need high surface area devices that promote efficient heat flow while also being compact and lightweight. In some industries like aerospace, this combination is particularly important as part size and mass have a direct impact on system performance, range, and costs.

Unfortunately, according to the Illinois researchers, heat exchanger designs haven’t changed all that much over the past few decades. Limited by conventional manufacturing technologies, we haven’t been able to integrate complex structures like internal channels that optimize heat flow. However, with metal 3D printing now being a viable option, 3D heat exchanger designs that were previously assumed to be impossible can be fabricated with ease. All that was needed was a dedicated software tool to design the new, more efficient devices.

An optimized tube-in-tube heat exchanger

Using its 3D design software, the team studied a special type of heat exchanger called a tube-in-tube exchanger, which is often found in drinking water systems and building energy systems. As the name suggests, tube-in-tube exchangers feature an inner tube nested inside an outer tube. The Illinois design also had a set of integrated fins on the inside of the tubes – an internal design feature only made possible by 3D printing technology.

Once the optimized design was finalized, the engineers printed the heat exchanger using AlSi10Mg and performance tested it in a lab environment. The device was found to have a power density of 26.6 W/cm3 and a specific power of 15.7 kW/kg, which is reportedly around 20x higher than that of comparable commercial heat exchangers.

“We designed, fabricated, and tested an optimized tube-in-tube heat exchanger,” said Nenad Miljkovic, associate professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering and co-leader of the study. “Our optimized heat exchanger has about 20 times higher volumetric power density than a current state-of-the-art commercial tube-in-tube device.”

The heat exchanger’s internal structure and surrounding systems. Image via University of Illinois.

Further details of the study can be found in the paper titled ‘Ultra-power-dense heat exchanger development through genetic algorithm design and additive manufacturing’. It is co-authored by Hyunkyu Moon, Davis McGregor, Nenad Miljkovic, and William King.

Earlier this month, researchers at RMIT University, Australia, developed a set of next-generation 3D printed heat exchangers powered by jet fuel. The 3D printed catalysts, as they’re called, are metal heat exchangers coated in synthetic minerals known as zeolites. Using jet fuel as a coolant, they could be the key to solving one of hypersonic flight’s biggest issues: overheating.

Elsewhere, GE Research, the R&D wing of American conglomerate GE, recently successfully tested its own novel 3D printed heat exchanger prototype at temperatures of up to 900°C. Designed alongside the University of Maryland and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), GE Research’s subscale thermal regulation device features a unique grape-like geometry that provides it with extreme heat and pressure resistant qualities.

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Featured image shows a rendering of the optimized 3D printed heat exchanger. Image via University of Illinois.

Tags Davis McGregor Hyunkyu Moon Nenad Miljkovic University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign William King

Kubi Sertoglu

Kubi Sertoglu holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering, combining an affinity for writing with a technical background to deliver the latest news and reviews in additive manufacturing.

3D printed heat exchanger "more efficient" than conventional designs

A new type of lightweight 3D printed heat exchanger with a labyrinth design is more compact and efficient than its conventional counterparts, according to the developers.

A team led by engineers from the University of Glasgow has developed a system that uses the unique properties of micro-sized surfaces to create a high performance heat exchanger.

Heat exchangers, devices that transfer heat between liquids without mixing them, have a wide range of practical applications. Heat exchangers that transfer thermal energy between fluids are used in cooling systems, fuel cells, and types of internal combustion engines used in automobiles and aircraft. nine0003

In a new article published in the journal Applied Thermal Engineering, researchers describe how they designed and built a prototype system that they estimate is 50% more efficient than a traditional market-leading heat exchanger, despite its size. is one tenth of its size.

The system owes its effectiveness to the design of the architectural surfaces on which fluids flow through the heat exchanger. The cube-shaped heat exchanger sucks water through a core dotted with tiny holes arranged in a gyroid pattern. nine0003

Gyroids are part of a group of designs that are built using periodic minimum surface geometries having non-self-intersecting and highly symmetrical periodic surfaces.

The team decided to use a repeating gyroid architecture for their heat exchanger because the heat transfer efficiency is related to its surface area - the larger the surface area, the more ability the fluids have to transfer their thermal energy from one to another. This means that objects with a large surface area can cool or heat liquids faster than objects with a more limited surface area. nine0003

Their micro-scale gyroid design, which they made from a simple photopolymer using a sophisticated 3D printer, turns a large surface area into a compact cube measuring 32. 2mm on each side and weighing only eight grams.

By drawing water through this dense maze, the researchers were able to demonstrate temperature changes of 10 to 20ºC as the water flowed through their heat exchanger at a rate of 100 to 270 millimeters per minute.

The team measured the heat transfer coefficient of their new heat exchanger — a measure of its efficiency in transferring heat between a fluid and its surfaces — to determine how it performs compared to a series of conventional heat exchangers of varying sizes made from materials including polymers and metals. nine0003

They found that their new heat exchanger was 50% more efficient than the thermodynamically equivalent, most efficient counterflow heat exchanger, even though their newly developed prototype was only 10% smaller.

The study was led by Dr. Shanmugam Kumar of the James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, along with colleagues from Swansea University and Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi.

The team's paper titled "3D Printed High-Performance Microarchitecture Compact Heat Exchanger" was published in the journal Applied Thermal Engineering. nine0003

Further Information: Tisha Dixit et al., 3D Printed High Performance Microarchitecture Compact Heat Exchanger, Applied Thermal Engineering (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2022.118339

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: Additive technologies 3d printingIndustrial equipmentHeat exchangers

The Future of Printing Engine Heat Exchangers

The Future of Printing Engine Heat Exchangers

Manufacturing of heat exchangers using additive manufacturing holds great promise. Dr. O'Hara, division manager at nTopology, explains why this will see mass adoption in the near future: “The biggest constraint for both internal combustion and rocket engines is heat removal and removal. Heat from a turbine engine, electronic device, or working fluid often must be transported in such a way as to maintain the critical process from which the heat is generated. Heat exchangers are key to these processes and require complex internal geometries to be efficient. 3D printed heat exchangers have the potential to deliver huge performance gains by increasing surface area and reducing wall thickness to enable heat exchange in ways that are simply not possible with traditional CNC design and manufacturing.” nine0003

300% increase in heat transfer

The part shown is a high efficiency heat exchanger (HEX) used in the aerospace industry. It replaced the outdated hexagonal heat exchanger filled with numerous tubes inside. The fact is that the traditional heat exchanger did not allow increasing engine power.

In this case, the nTop design platform allowed engineers to determine the part volume for a modified heat exchanger design, maximizing surface area while minimizing internal wall thickness and thus product weight. The surface area of ​​the part was maximized using the Tri-Period Minimum Surface (TPMS), also known as the gyroid structure. By incorporating this structure into the heat exchanger design, the team achieved a 146% increase in surface area compared to traditional tubular and shell hexagonal heat exchangers of the same size. nine0003

“Combined with 3D printing, these TPMS structures enable the design of parts with high demands on strength and heat dissipation in a way that was not previously possible,” O'Hara elaborates.

The wall thickness of the component has been kept to a minimum thanks in large part to the use of nanofunctional high strength 7000 series aluminum alloy (7A77), which was developed specifically for additive manufacturing. The high strength of the metal allowed for thinner inner walls in the heat exchanger without sacrificing strength or performance. Moreover, the gyroid structure has walls about half as thick as those made from traditional cast aluminum alloys for 3D printing.

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