Clearly, the long promised additive manufacturing revolution is at hand today. Bespoke catalytic converters, and now researchers down the street in Mechanical Engineering at UIUC report on bespoke super performing heat exchangers [2].
The Illinois research creates highly efficient tube in tube heat exchangers, which work by passing fluids over complex a 3D geometry which wicks up the heat. I’m no expert, but I’m sure that the optimal geometry depends on the fluid, the temperatures, the flow, and the materials in the heat exchanger.
One advantage of additive manufacturing, AKA, 3D printing, is that it can realize complicated geometries that are very difficult to create by other methods. A second advantage is that the geometry is controlled by software, so it can be programmed and optimized.
Did you say software? Did you say optimizing? As a matter of fact, at Illinois we do know how to make clever optimizing software. Have been doing it for well over fifty years, thank you very much.
The basic idea is to use Genetic Algorithms to optimize simulations of the physics of the fins (which look kind of like snow flakes in cross section). These fins are combined with a model of the physics to yield a digital model of the theoretical device. The device is then printed out with a powdered metal 3D printer. Voila! A bespoke heat exchanger.
This “bespokeness” is one of the neat things about this additive fabrication. Basically, it’s possible to design and create a piece for each use, tuned to the exact specifications. This kind of optimizing software isn’t a design for a good heat exchanger, it encapsulates the best design for any heat exchanger you want.
Cool!
(Well, I guess some parts are cool and some parts are hot—it’s a heat exchanger, after all. : – ))
- Grainger College of Engineering, Illinois researchers demonstrate extreme heat exchanger with additive manufacturing, in Mechanical Science & Engineering – News, September 9, 2021. https://mechse.illinois.edu/news/41505
- Hyunkyu Moon, Davis J. McGregor, Nenad Miljkovic, and William P. King, Ultra-power-dense heat exchanger development through genetic algorithm design and additive manufacturing. Joule, 2021/09/09/ 2021. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435121003883
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