Micro heat exchanger

The most typical such confinement are microchannels, which are channels with a hydraulic diameter below 1 mm.

[1] Microchannel heat exchangers can be used for many applications including: Investigation of microscale thermal devices is motivated by the single phase internal flow correlation for convective heat transfer: Where

This is a result which can be arrived at analytically: For the case of a constant wall temperature,

This correlation therefore indicates that the heat transfer coefficient increases as channel diameter decreases.

Should the hydraulic diameter in forced convection be on the order of tens or hundreds of micrometres, an extremely high heat transfer coefficient should result.

[7] Their positive results led to further research ranging from classical investigations of single channel heat transfer[8] to more applied investigations in parallel micro-channel and micro scale plate fin heat exchangers.

Recent work in the field has focused on the potential of two-phase flows at the micro-scale.

If a chemical reaction is conducted inside a micro heat exchanger, the latter is also called a microreactor.