PHE-17-TR Liquid-phase and Boiling Testing in a Welded Plate Heat Exchanger
HTRI conducted liquid-phase and phase-change experiments in a welded plate heat exchanger (WPHE) provided by Hisaka Works, Ltd. With the test plate pack installed vertically, cold fluid flowed horizontally, and steam condensed downward. We conducted single-phase and boiling tests using p-xylene as the test fluid, as well as boiling tests using a mixture of n-pentane/p-xylene. Thermal stratification occurred during liquid-phase flow, while liquid-vapor stratification occurred during flow boiling. Our single-phase correlations for plate-and-frame heat exchangers (PHEs) predict the liquid-phase p-xylene data well. Xphe® 7.3 predicts most of the boiling data within ±25% but tends to overpredict heat transfer coefficients with a channel liquid Reynolds number lower than 3000.