Conference Year

2018

Keywords

Microchannel, heat exchanger, automotive, cost modeling

Abstract

Calls for higher fuel efficiency in the United States and Europe are driving the need for waste heat recovery in automotive markets. While conventional heat exchangers can be designed to meet the heat duty requirement, the resulting volume, weight, and thermal mass are too large for rapid transient response and packaging of the device. The lightweight, compact form factor of microchannel heat exchangers with submillimeter flow passages is attractive for automotive applications. However, the industrial use of microchannel heat exchangers continues to be inhibited by high manufacturing costs. The objective of this paper is to develop a microchannel heat exchanger concept capable of meeting the cost and performance goals for an automotive application. So-called printed-circuit microchannel heat exchangers are produced using a stacked-lamina approach in which individual metal laminae are photochemically machined and diffusion bonded. Here, the conceptual design of a microchannel heat exchanger produced using more conventional stamping and joining technologies is discussed for an automotive application. The device is sized to provide waste heat recovery from an exhaust stream to engine coolant for a representative passenger vehicle with acceptable pressure loss. Using the specified design, a process-based cost model is presented showing cost modeling efforts to date including the capital investment and cost-of-goods-sold as a function of annual production volume. The initial results show a pathway for the cost effective integration of compact microchannel heat exchangers into advanced vehicle thermal management systems.

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