Transient testing of perforated plate matrix heat exchangers

Till recently, perforated plate matrix heat exchangers (MHEs) were used mainly in helium liquefaction systems and Brayton cycle refrigerators. Currently they are also being used in Kleemenko or J-T refrigerators operating with a mixture of gases. It is now well understood that the effectiveness of a MHE is strongly dependent on the number of plate-spacer pairs used. It has also been shown that the traditional methods used for reducing the transient single blow method to determine the heat transfer coefficients cannot be used for MHEs. In this paper we show that the traditional methods can indeed be used for determining the heat transfer coefficients using the transient testing methods, provided certain conditions are met. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.