Application of Ceramic Lattice Structures to Design Compact, High Temperature Heat Exchangers: Material and Architecture Selection

Abstract

In this work, we report the design of ceramic lattices produced via additive manufacturing (AM) used to improve the overall performances of compact, high temperature heat exchangers (HXs). The lattice architecture was designed using a Kelvin cell, which provided the best compromise among effective thermal conductivity, specific surface area, dispersion coefficient and pressure loss, compared to other cell geometries. A material selection was performed considering the specific composition of the fluids and the operating temperatures of the HX, and Silicon Carbide (SiC) was identified as promising materials for the application. The 3D printing of a polymeric template combined with the replica method was chosen as the best manufacturing approach to produce SiC lattices. The heat transfer behaviour of various lattice configurations, based on the Kelvin cell, was determined through computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The results are used to discuss the application of such structures to compact high temperature HXs.

Fabrication of dense SiSiC ceramics by a hybrid additive manufacturing process

“…Ceramic materials are widely used in applications where the components operate at high temperature (above 1000 • C), such as industrial burners, solar absorbers, heat exchangers, heat storage systems, and energy plants. [1][2][3][4] Such materials suffer high thermal and oxidative stresses during their operation, and therefore they must meet several requirements such as good strength, high temperature resistance, high thermal shock resistance, and oxidation resistance. [5][6][7][8] Reaction-bonded silicon carbide (RB-SiC or SiSiC), also known as siliconized silicon carbide or silicon infiltrated silicon carbide, is widely used in several engineering applications where endurance and thermal stability is required.…”

“…Ceramic materials are widely used in applications where the components operate at high temperature (above 1000°C), such as industrial burners, solar absorbers, heat exchangers, heat storage systems, and energy plants 1–4 . Such materials suffer high thermal and oxidative stresses during their operation, and therefore they must meet several requirements such as good strength, high temperature resistance, high thermal shock resistance, and oxidation resistance 5–8 .…”

Triply Periodic Minimal Surface Structures: Design, Fabrication, 3D Printing Techniques, State‐of‐the‐Art Studies, and Prospective Thermal Applications for Efficient Energy Utilization

“…Such hybrid techniques include incorporating ceramic powders in filaments or resins used in fused deposition modeling (FDM) or stereolithography (SLA) techniques, followed by subsequent polymer phase burnout and ceramic phase sintering. [31,32] The AM fabrication of TPMS-based structures also requires paying attention to the potential impact of the fabrication process itself on the performance of the thermal management device during operation. Defects that may occur during the fabrication process, such as microcracks, internal voids, deviation in tolerance, and deviation from the design, among other defects, are factors that can affect the inherent thermal properties of the base material and the overall robustness of the fabricated device.…”

Finite element framework for modeling conducto-radiative transfers within heterogeneous media at both discrete and continuous scales

“…In the field of free-carbon heat generation and waste heat recovery at high temperatures (T > 1000 o C), there is a growing interest in the design of durable high temperature energy systems with high thermal efficiency such as gas-to-gas heat exchangers [1], volumetric solar receivers [2,3,4], thermal protection systems [5,6,7,8], and radiant tube inserts [9], among other interesting processes. These systems can be described as radiativeconvective heat exchangers [10] containing porous structures which play a key role in promoting the volumetric propagation of both radiation and temperature advected by a fluid flow.…”