Development of polymer plate heat exchangers for outdoors telecom cabinet cooling systems

Air-to-air heat exchanger is generally used in the telecom equipment cabinet to divide the outside and inside air streams and exchange heat between these two air streams. Thin aluminium plates with ripple surface and protrusion are commonly used in these kinds of heat exchangers. This study provides a heat transfer enhancement design and experimental analysis of thin plastic air-to-air heat exchangers. Two plastic plate heat exchangers, one with 65o chevron angle and the other with chevron angle of 30o in the main stream and 65o in the inlet and exit passages was designed and tested. From the experimental results, we found that the chevron flow passage is able to significantly enhance the heat exchangers' heat transfer performance. The 30o+65o chevron heat exchanger provides a lower pressure drop but higher heat transfer performance than other two heat exchangers. It is the best design for air-to-air heat transfer in the range tested.