Enabling High Heat Transfer Heat Exchangers through Binary Particle Size Distributions

This team will investigate a novel strategy to mix two different particle sizes with the aim of significantly increasing the thermal conductivity in heat exchangers that use packed bed of particles. These binary particle mixtures can be realized for little to no additional cost as they only require mixing of two unique particle sizes. This project will investigate how binary particle size distribution affects bulk effective thermal conductivity through high temperature characterization of the particles mixtures. The team will also analyze changes in thermal resistance on the wall of the heat exchanger using modulated photothermal radiometry. If successful, the project will culminate in a demonstration of the heat exchanger performance improvement using Sandia National Laboratory's particle-to-sCO2 subscale demonstration heat exchanger.