Analysis of a Counter Flow Parallel-plate Heat Exchanger

Heat exchangers are used widely in many industries for heat recovery or cooling purposes.This paper developed a numerical model to simulate a counter flow parallel heat exchanger.A representative repeating unit cell of the multichanneled heat exchanger was taken as the computational domain, which includes a cold channel and a hot channel separated by plates.The model was simulated in COMSOL for an oil to water heat exchanger.Higher temperature oil and relatively lower temperature water entered two separate parallel channels in opposite directions.The detailed distributions of temperature, velocity, and pressure were used to analyze the performance of the heat exchanger.It was found the model can be used to provide guidance for designing an optimal heat exchanger.