Robust foil regenerator flow loss and heat transfer tests under oscillating flow condition

Yanaga, Koji; Li, Ruijie; Qiu, Songgang

doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2020.115525

Robust foil regenerator flow loss and heat transfer tests under oscillating flow condition

Journal Article · Wed Jun 03 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Applied Thermal Engineering

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2020.115525· OSTI ID:1799104

Yanaga, Koji ^[1]; Li, Ruijie ^[2]; Qiu, Songgang ^[2]

West Virginia Univ., Morgantown, WV (United States); OSTI
West Virginia Univ., Morgantown, WV (United States)

A regenerator works as an energy storage component in a Stirling engine. Thus, it is one of the most critical components that makes the Stirling engine highly efficient. Traditionally, the regenerators are made of wire media such as woven screens and random fibers. These wire regenerators experience considerably high flow losses through the regenerator due to the flow separation and the resulting vortices. The high flow losses associated with the flow separation and vortices result in a lower engine efficiency. This research is to test a new robust foil regenerator to investigate its feasibility for free-piston Stirling engine applications. The robust foil regenerator is configured with parallel flow channels and stiffening ribs. Comparing to complex flows patterns in woven screen and random fiber regenerators, the flows in the parallel plates are simple and the flow losses are considerably small, and the heat transfer coefficient is also relatively small. To test the regenerator experimentally, a regenerator test rig was manufactured. To verify the accuracy of the test rig, a woven screen regenerator was made and tested prior to the robust foil regenerator test. The friction factor correlation of the woven screen regenerator shows a good agreement with the published regenerator correlations. The robust foil regenerator tests were conducted under the oscillating flow condition with different Reynolds numbers. The flow losses were measured with dynamic pressure transducers and the friction coefficient was derived from measured pressure drop. The measured temperature difference over the regenerator was used to calculate the heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number. The figure of merit with two methods of NPH/NTU ratio and j/f ratio was calculated to evaluate the suitability of the robust foil regenerator. The results show that the robust foil regenerator has considerably higher figure of merit and therefore, better performance than other types of regenerator.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: West Virginia Univ., Morgantown, WV (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)

Grant/Contract Number:: AR0000864

OSTI ID:: 1799104

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1702982

Journal Information:: Applied Thermal Engineering, Journal Name: Applied Thermal Engineering Vol. 178; ISSN 1359-4311

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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42 ENGINEERING
experiment
figure of merit
flow loss
heat transfer
robust foil regenerator

Robust foil regenerator flow loss and heat transfer tests under oscillating flow condition

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References (23)

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