Pressure drop related to flow maldistribution in a model minichannel plate heat exchanger

The paper describes issues related to pressure drop that accompanies the phenomenon of maldistribution of working fluid between the channels of a model minichannel plate heat exchanger. The research concerns a single exchanger’s plate containing 51 (in every geometry) parallel rectangular minichannels of hydraulic diameters 461 µm, 571 µm, 750 µm, and 823 µm. In addition, more complex geometry has been investigated, equipped with additional diagonal channels (so called extended geometry). The moment of the liquid phase transition through the heat exchanger was recorded at the flow rates ranging from 0.83 g/s to 13.33 g/s in the inlet manifold. The paper discusses the total pressure drop as a function of the flow rate and the characteristic dimension of minichannels, as well as the pressure drop as a function of the time of the fluid passage through the main part of the measuring section in which measurements were done. The resulting profiles correlate with the images of the flow distribution between channels recorded using the fast shutter speed camera, that allows to draw a further conclusions about the specifics of the maldistribution process. The impact of the total pressure drop on the actual range of optimum operating conditions of the heat exchanger was analyzed.