Matching Items (9)
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- All Subjects: Thermodynamics
- Creators: Phelan, Patrick
Description
In these times of increasing industrialization, there arises a need for effective and energy efficient heat transfer/heat exchange devices. The focus nowadays is on identifying various methods and techniques which can aid the process of developing energy efficient devices. One of the most common heat transfer devices is a heat exchanger. Heat exchangers are an essential commodity to any industry and their efficiency can play an important role in making industries energy efficient and reduce the energy losses in the devices, in turn decreasing energy inputs to run the industry.
One of the ways in which we can improve the efficiency of heat exchangers is by applying ultrasonic energy to a heat exchanger. This research explores the possibility of introducing the external input of ultrasonic energy to increase the efficiency of the heat exchanger. This increase in efficiency can be estimated by calculating the parameters important for the characterization of a heat exchanger, which are effectiveness (ε) and overall heat transfer coefficient (U). These parameters are calculated for both the non-ultrasound and ultrasound conditions in the heat exchanger.
This a preliminary study of ultrasound and its effect on a conventional shell-and-coil heat exchanger. From the data obtained it can be inferred that the increase in effectiveness and overall heat transfer coefficient upon the application of ultrasound is 1% and 6.22% respectively.
One of the ways in which we can improve the efficiency of heat exchangers is by applying ultrasonic energy to a heat exchanger. This research explores the possibility of introducing the external input of ultrasonic energy to increase the efficiency of the heat exchanger. This increase in efficiency can be estimated by calculating the parameters important for the characterization of a heat exchanger, which are effectiveness (ε) and overall heat transfer coefficient (U). These parameters are calculated for both the non-ultrasound and ultrasound conditions in the heat exchanger.
This a preliminary study of ultrasound and its effect on a conventional shell-and-coil heat exchanger. From the data obtained it can be inferred that the increase in effectiveness and overall heat transfer coefficient upon the application of ultrasound is 1% and 6.22% respectively.
ContributorsAnnam, Roshan Sameer (Author) / Phelan, Patrick (Thesis advisor) / Rykaczewski, Konrad (Committee member) / Milcarek, Ryan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems are becoming increasingly common as the efficiency of solar panels increase, the cost decreases, and worries about climate change increase and become increasingly prevalent. An under explored aspect of rooftop solar systems is the thermal effects that the systems have on the local area. These effects are investigated in this paper to determine the overall impact that solar systems have on the heating and cooling demands of a building as well as on the efficiency losses of the solar panels due to the increased temperature on the panels themselves. The specific building studied in this paper is the Goldwater Center for Science and Engineering located in the Tempe campus of Arizona State University. The ambient conditions were modeled from a typical July day in Tempe. A numerical model of a simple flat roof was also created to find the average rooftop temperature throughout the day. Through this study it was determined that solar panels cause a decrease in the maximum temperature of the rooftop during the day, while reducing the ability of the roof to be cooled during the night. The solar panels also saw a high temperature during the day during the most productive time of day for solar panels, which saw a decrease in total energy production for the panels.
ContributorsNaber, Nicholas (Author) / Huang, Huei-Ping (Thesis advisor) / Phelan, Patrick (Committee member) / Bocanegra, Luis (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Concentrating solar thermal power systems gained a wide interest for a long time to serve as a renewable and sustainable alternate source of energy. While the optimization and modification are ongoing, focused generally on solar power systems to provide solar-electrical energy or solar-thermal energy, the production process of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) has not changed over the past century. A linear refractive Fresnel lens application in cement production process is investigated in this research to provide the thermal power required to raise the temperature of lime up to 623 K (350C) with zero carbon emissions for stage two in a new proposed two-stage production process. The location is considered to be Phoenix, Arizona, with a linear refractive Fresnel lens facing south, tilted 33.45 equaling the location latitude, and concentrating solar beam radiation on an evacuated tube collector with tracking system continuously rotating about the north-south axis. The mathematical analysis showed promising results based on averaged monthly values representing an average hourly useful thermal power and receiver temperature during day-light hours for each month throughout the year. The maximum average hourly useful thermal power throughout the year was obtained for June as 33 kWth m-2 with a maximum receiver temperature achieved of 786 K (513C), and the minimum useful thermal power obtained during the month of December with 27 kWth m-2 and a minimum receiver temperature of 701 K (428C).
ContributorsAlkhuwaiteem, Mohammad (Author) / Phelan, Patrick (Thesis advisor) / Shuaib, Abdelrahman (Committee member) / Neithalath, Narayanan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
This research aims to develop a single-phase immersion cooling system for CPU (Central Processing Unit) processors. To achieve this, a heat pipe with a
dielectric liquid is designed to be used to cool the CPU, relying only on natural
convection. A Tesla valve phenomenon is used to achieve the one-directional,
recirculating system. A comparative study was conducted between two different
single-phase dielectric fluids Mineral Oil and FC 3283 (Fluorocarbon), utilizing
natural convection and Boussinesq correlations. ANSYS Fluent was used to conduct
CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) analysis, demonstrating natural convection
and recirculating flow in the heating direction. A comparison was made between the
traditional cooling method of air and the developed immersion cooling system, with
the results indicating that the system is capable of reducing the operating
temperature of the CPU by 40 to 50 degrees Celsius, depending on the power
consumption. The results of the experiment conducted showed that a processor cooled
by Mineral oil would operate at 56 degrees Celsius, while a processor cooled by FC
3283 would operate at 47 degrees Celsius. By comparison, a processor cooled by the
traditional air-cooled system would operate between 80 and 100 degrees Celsius.
These results demonstrate that the Mineral oil and FC 3283 cooling systems are
significantly more efficient than the traditional air-cooled system. This could prove to
be a valuable asset in the development of more efficient cooling systems. Further
research is necessary to evaluate the longevity, cost-effectiveness, and benefits of
these systems in comparison to traditional air cooling
ContributorsGajjar, Kathan Malaybhai (Author) / Huang, Huei Ping (Thesis advisor) / Chen, Kangping (Committee member) / Phelan, Patrick (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
In nature, it is commonly observed that animals and birds perform movement-based thermoregulation activities to regulate their body temperatures. For example, flapping of elephant ears or plumage fluffing in birds. Taking inspiration from nature and to explore the possibilities of such heat transfer enhancements, augmentation of heat transfer rates induced by the vibration of solid and well as novel flexible pinned heatsinks were studied in this research project. Enhancement of natural convection has always been very important in improving the performance of the cooling mechanisms. In this research, flexible heatsinks were developed and they were characterized based on natural convection cooling with moderately vibrating conditions. The vibration of heated surfaces such as motor surfaces, condenser surfaces, robotic arms and exoskeletons led to the motivation of the development of heat sinks having flexible fins with an improved heat transfer capacity. The performance of an inflexible, solid copper pin fin heat sink was considered as the baseline, current industry standard for the thermal performance. It is expected to obtain maximum convective heat transfer at the resonance frequency of the flexible pin fins. Current experimental results with fixed input frequency and varying amplitudes indicate that the vibration provides a moderate improvement in convective heat transfer, however, the flexibility of fins had negligible effects.
ContributorsPrabhu, Saurabh (Author) / Rykaczewski, Konrad (Thesis advisor) / Phelan, Patrick (Committee member) / Wang, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Buildings release an abundance of waste heat that is left unused. Thermogalvaniccells (TGCs) can take advantage of waste heat to generate electricity with a low
temperature gradient. In this dissertation, I simulated the thermal transport of TGCs
containing different triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) structures, compared it
to measured values and conducted a mesh convergence study to examine the viability
of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solutions. Natural convection effects are
one of the driving forces in TGCs. Using the Bousinesq approximation, I was able to
capture those effects in the CFD simulations as it accounts for the density variations
of the fluid. Upon simulating the TGC using the Schwarz P TPMS geometry, the
cathode temperature converged as I refined the mesh and approached the measured
value. As for the IWP TPMS structure, the solution converged as I refined the mesh,
despite having a deviation to the measured values. This was due to the abundance of
sharp regions along the walls of the TPMS that ANSYS had difficulty to accurately
model.
Furthermore, I simulated the TGCs using different boundary condition (BC) approximations to observe the cathode and anode temperatures as well as their overall
∆T across the cell. For the TGC containing the Schwarz P geometry, Case C (constant anode temperature BC with TPMS conduction) was the most accurate while
Case D (convection BC at anode with TPMS conduction) deviated from the measured
values, had the most accurate ∆T and was well within the uncertainty bounds of the
measured values. Larger temperature fluctuations were seen closer to the cathode
while the effects steadily decrease as the fluid approaches the anode.
Moreover, the TGC containing the IWP structures presented interesting results.
The main deviation was from the cathode temperatures because a higher temperature
readings meant that more cells in the fluid domain were prone to diverging, thereby
resulting in a higher calculated cathode temperature. Simulating the TGC with the
Schwarz P geometry produced satisfactory results while the TGC using the IWP
geometry deviated due to the software limitations. Finally, the effects of natural
convection and TPMS on TGCs were studied and it was found that the absence of
natural convection lead to a higher ∆T while the absence of TPMS resulted in a more
uniform temperature distribution throughout the domain
Contributorsalweqayyan, yousef (Author) / Phelan, Patrick (Thesis advisor) / Rykaczewski, Konrad (Committee member) / Milcarek, Ryan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Thermal management is a critical aspect of microelectronics packaging and often centers around preventing central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) from overheating. As the need for power going into these processors increases, so too does the need for more effective thermal management strategies. One such strategy is to utilize additive manufacturing to fabricate heat sinks with bio-inspired and cellular structures and is the focus of this thesis. In this study, a process was developed for manufacturing the copper alloy CuNi2SiCr on the 100w Concept Laser Mlab laser powder bed fusion 3D printer to obtain parts that were 94% dense, while dealing with challenges of low absorptivity in copper and its high potential for oxidation. The developed process was then used to manufacture and test heat sinks with traditional pin and fin designs to establish a baseline cooling effect, as determined from tests conducted on a substrate, CPU and heat spreader assembly. Two additional heat sinks were designed, the first of these being bio-inspired and the second incorporating Triply Periodic Minimal Surface (TPMS) cellular structures, with the aim of trying to improve the cooling effect relative to commercial heat sinks. The results showed that the pure copper commercial pin-design heat sink outperformed the additive manufactured (AM) pin-design heat sink under both natural and forced convection conditions due to its approximately tenfold higher thermal conductivity, but that the gap in performance could be bridged using the bio-inspired and Schwarz-P heat sink designs developed in this work and is an encouraging indicator that further improvements could be obtained with improved alloys, heat treatments and even more innovative designs.
ContributorsYaple, Jordan Marie (Author) / Bhate, Dhruv (Thesis advisor) / Azeredo, Bruno (Committee member) / Phelan, Patrick (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
The phase change process of freezing water is an important application in several fields such as ice making, food freezing technologies, pharmaceuticals etc. Due to the widespread usage of ice-related products, process improvements in this technology can potentially lead to substantial energy savings. After studying the freezing process of water, the supercooling phenomenon was found to occur which showed a negative effect. Therefore, ultrasound was proposed as a technique to reduce the supercooling effect and improve the heat transfer rate. An experimental study was conducted to analyze the energy expenditures in the freezing process with and without the application of ultrasound. After a set of preliminary experiments, an intermittent application of ultrasound at 10W & 3.5W power levels were found to be more effective than constant-power application, and were explored in further detail. The supercooling phenomenon was thoroughly studied through iterative experiments. It was also found that the application of ultrasound during the freezing process led to the formation of shard-like ice crystals. From the intermittent ultrasound experiments performed at 10W and 3.5W power levels, percentage energy enhancements relative to no ultrasound of 8.9% ± 12.4% and 11.9% ± 24.6% were observed, respectively.
ContributorsSubramanian, Varun (Author) / Phelan, Patrick (Thesis advisor) / Calhoun, Ronald (Committee member) / Rykaczewski, Konrad (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Energy storage technologies are essential to overcome the temporal variability in renewable energy. The primary aim of this thesis is to develop reactor solutions to better analyze the potential of thermochemical energy storage (TCES) using non-stoichiometric metal oxides, for the multi-day energy storage application. A TCES system consists of a reduction reactor and an insulated MOx storage bin. The reduction reactor heats (to ~ 1100 °C) and partially reduces the MOx, thereby adding sensible and chemical energy (i.e., charging it) under reduced pO2 environments (~10 Pa). Inert gas removes the oxygen generated during reduction. The storage bin holds the hot and partially reduced MOx (typically particles) until it is used in an energy recovery device (i.e., discharge). Irrespective of the reactor heat source (here electrical), or the particle-inert gas flows (here countercurrent), the thermal reduction temperature and inert gas (here N2) flow minimize when the process approaches reversibility, i.e., operates near equilibrium. This study specifically focuses on developing a reduction reactor based on the theoretical considerations for approaching reversibility along the reaction path. The proposed Zigzag flow reactor (ZFR) is capable of thermally reducing CAM28 particles at temperatures ~ 1000 °C under an O2 partial pressure ~ 10 Pa. The associated analytical and numerical models analyze the reaction equilibrium under a real (discrete) reaction path and the mass transfer kinetic conditions necessary to approach equilibrium. The discrete equilibrium model minimizes the exergy destroyed in a practical reactor and identifies methods of maximizing the energy storage density () and the exergetic efficiency. The mass transfer model analyzes the O2 N2 concentration boundary layers to recommend sizing considerations to maximize the reactor power density. Two functional ZFR prototypes, the -ZFR and the -ZFR, establish the proof of concept and achieved a reduction extent, Δδ = 0.071 with CAM28 at T~950 °C and pO2 = 10 Pa, 7x higher than a previous attempt in the literature. The -ZFR consistently achieved > 100 Wh/kg during >10 h. runtime and the -ZFR displayed an improved = 130 Wh/kg during >5 h. operation with CAM28. A techno-economic model of a grid-scale ZFR with an associated storage bin analyzes the cost of scaling the ZFR for grid energy storage requirements. The scaled ZFR capital costs contribute < 1% to the levelized cost of thermochemical energy storage, which ranges from 5-20 ¢/kWh depending on the storage temperature and storage duration.
ContributorsGhotkar, Rhushikesh (Author) / Milcarek, Ryan (Thesis advisor) / Ermanoski, Ivan (Committee member) / Phelan, Patrick (Committee member) / Wang, Liping (Committee member) / Wang, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023