On 30.03.2017, Asst. Prof. Beni Cukurel was awarded “Henri Gutwirth Prize for Promotion of Excellence in Research” on his research associated with “Acoustic Resonance Enhanced Heat Exchangers”.
In the modern technological world, many systems require heat to be either added or dissipated towards maintaining their operability and enhancing their thermodynamic efficiency. This change in gas/liquid temperature is typically provided by a heat exchanger (HE), which operates by associating two streams of different thermal potential. Due to form factor limitations of many size restrained applications, the state of the art is advancing towards more compact designs. This forms the basis towards higher performance and efficiency HEs – enabling more heat transfer for the same size heat exchanger unit. This can be achieved by means of designs having sets of perturbators (ribs, pins, fins etc.) in the heat exchange passageways, providing larger heat transfer surface area per unit of volume and promoting turbulence in the flow. This yields higher thermal efficiency at the expense of additional pressure penalty.
Prof. Cukurel’s project is complementary to current existing HE designs, as he seeks to further increase the thermal efficiency of existing HE units without significant geometric modifications. In the scope of his work, the heat transfer in an existing unit is augmented using a standing acoustic wave. Preliminary research has achieved significant heat transfer enhancement (up to 25%) without inducing additional pressure drop.
