Experimental study of the thermo-hydraulic performance of 3-stream plate-fin heat exchanger

Abstract The performance of 3-stream plate-fin heat exchanger in a helium refrigerator plant having modified Claude cycle is crucial to achieve required refrigeration power. This 3-stream plate-fin heat exchanger has been designed using serrated fins of Al-alloy (Al3003) for 2 hot helium streams of flow rates ~13 g/s and ~17 g/s and cold helium stream of 30 g/s with cold end at ~15 K and hot end at ~27 K. The fabricated 3-stream heat exchanger has been tested down to 80 K in a simplified test bed before using it in the plant. In this test bed, for 3-stream heat exchanger, the temperature at cold end was ~90 K and at hot end, ~300 K. A simple test set-up has been made without a vacuum chamber and using insulation like nitrile rubber and MLI. In this test set up, thermo-hydraulic performances were measured successfully and found, by using ASPEN EDR software, to be quite nearer to designed value. The test set-up and results will be discussed in detail in this paper.