A Method of Mapping Heat Exchanger as Simple Polynomials

Conducting economic comparison studies of vapor-compression systems early in the product development process allows the designer to balance competing objectives of raw material costs, life-cycle cost, and system performance. However, detailed performance simulation models typically require iterative solutions at both the component and system levels. These nested iterative models make economic comparison studies computationally prohibitive. To address the challenge of nested iterations, non-iterative polynomial representations of components can be implemented. In this paper, a method to represent the heat exchangers’ effectiveness, pressure loss, refrigerant charge, and mass with non-iterative models is presented. A method of mapping the heat exchanger using Monte Carlo sampling over its operational and design space is given. The method is then applied to map the heat exchanger effectiveness, refrigerant charge level, pressure drop, and mass of a flooded type shell and tube heat exchanger. Heat exchangers are represented as a function of inlet conditions and heat exchanger geometries. This proposed method of representing heat exchanger as a polynomial map relieves the computationally heavy nature of finite control volume modeling of heat exchangers with non-iterative empirical maps. Such a method of mapping heat exchangers enables rapid iterations of the system model, thus enabling effective economic trade-off studies of vapor-compression systems