Abstract
Industrial heat-recovery systems, geothermal power plants and other thermal energy installations lose useful output through heat-exchanger inefficiency, fouling, scaling, corrosion and the additional electrical power required to circulate working fluids.
Existing heat-transfer enhancement techniques often use permanent swirl-generating inserts, twisted tapes, corrugated surfaces or other turbulence-producing geometries. These can improve heat transfer, but may also increase pressure losses and pumping requirements. Their performance depends strongly on exchanger geometry and operating conditions.
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ZAVHRE-1.0 proposes a different arrangement: a heat exchanger divided into independently testable flow zones, with selectable flow-conditioning elements that can produce straight-through, helical-swirl or alternative flow patterns.
Each zone is monitored for temperature change, pressure drop, flow rate and estimated thermal resistance. The operating configuration is selected according to its measured thermal-hydraulic performance, rather than assuming that stronger swirl is always beneficial.
The system is intended to investigate whether selective vortex generation, zone-level monitoring and controlled cleaning can improve useful heat recovery while reducing parasitic electrical consumption.
The intended applications include geothermal heat recovery, industrial waste-heat conversion, power-generation auxiliary systems and other continuous thermal processes.
The central hypothesis: a heat exchanger that can selectively create, reduce or eliminate swirl in individual zones may achieve a better net energy result than an exchanger with permanent full-length swirl enhancement.
No performance improvement is claimed until independently measured.
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Recommended Citation
Caldwell, Michael Victor Mr., "ZAVHRE-1.0 Zonal Adaptive Vortex-Field Heat-Recovery Exchanger A selectively controlled heat-transfer architecture designed to increase useful thermal recovery while minimizing pumping losses, fouling and maintenance energy.", Technical Disclosure Commons, ()
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/12621