Tube And Chamber Heat Exchanger With An Enhanced Modular Medium Directing Assembly

Abstract

A heat exchanger, having a main chamber coupled with a first and a second sub-chamber, having cavities within, on a respective first and a second longitudinal ends of the main chamber. Provided in the main chamber is a medium directing assembly, a first end engaging the first sub-chamber cavity and a second end engaging the second sub-chamber cavity, extending longitudinally out of the main chamber, enlarging the pathway provided within the medium directing assembly, reducing pressure drop effect to the medium flow within. The medium directing assembly comprising of an upper and a lower assembly, providing configuration flexibility, while provided with a medium directing panel coupled within, permitting means to facilitate flow directional changes to the medium. The medium directing assembly comprising of two vertical and two lateral sides, longitudinally provided with an inlet and an outlet and vertically provided with a distribution outlet and a collecting inlet.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]Heat exchangers are well known in the art. Heat exchangers are generally used when it is desired to transfer heat from a first heat exchange medium to a second heat exchange medium. The first heat exchange medium generally flows within the heat exchanger, while the second heat exchange medium flows outside of the heat exchanger. A tube and chamber type heat exchanger is a variant of a heat exchanger, typically characterized by having a medium directing insert disposed within a chamber of the heat exchanger, wherein the medium directing insert extracts as much performance out of any given heat transfer surface area by inducing mixing and agitating effect to the heat exchange medium flowing inside the heat exchanger, a mechanism known in the art to enhance heat transfer performance of the heat exchange medium by minimizing formation of boundary layers detrimental to effective heat transfer. The tube and chamber type heat exchangers are further characte...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention is a new heat exchanger design that improves heat transfer by reducing pressure drop. This is achieved by enlarging the narrowest flow path within the heat exchanger. The design also reduces tooling costs and improves manufacturability, resulting in a more cost-effective heat exchanger.

Problems solved by technology

It may be desirable to minimize pressure drop effect to the heat exchange medium flow, as such effect may have detrimental effect to the heat exchanger performance.

However, doing so may detrimentally affect the performance of the heat exchanger.

As the overall flow path within the chamber section is expanded, it may have an adverse effect of slowing the velocity of the heat exchange medium, which may negatively affect the performance of the heat exchanger.

It is not desirable to have any rotational movement from taking place, as such movement may have detrimental effect to the heat exchanger performance, by diverting away from function as was designed and intended.

Furthermore, movement of the medium directing assembly within the chamber assembly may lead to a premature failure of the heat exchanger, as friction between the respective components may lead to excessive wear of the components, potentially leading to a formation of a hole on the heat exchanger assembly body, leading to a catastrophic failure rendering the heat exchanger useless.

Similarly, having means to enlarge the heat exchange medium flow path within the medium directing assembly without enlarging the overall chamber section flow path may be desirable, as enlarging the overall chamber section to provide added flow area for the heat exchange medium may reduce the heat exchange medium velocity, which may be undesirable as reduced velocity generally reduces the heat transfer performance.

As tooling costs generally increase incrementally as stamping stations are increased, tooling that can produce the medium directing insert in a single tooling may lead to a prohibitively expensive tooling, also resulting in manufacturing complications.

Furthermore, a single tooling with high number of stamping stations generally require production machines to run at a lower production speed, generally increasing the production cost of a heat exchanger.

Single tooling design further leads to less flexibility to accommodate more than one medium directing insert design.

By reducing the medium directing insert into two components, just one half of the medium directing insert may be changed over for another design, while leaving the second half as same, permitting means to cater to a variety of customer needs while reducing the investment required in tooling effectively in half Minimizing tooling costs further results in lower components cost, thereby resulting in cost competitive heat exchanger assembly by extension.

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