Evaluation of Heat and Mass Transfer Models for Sizing Low-Temperature Kalina Cycle Microchannel Condensers

Waste heat driven ammonia/water Kalina cycles have shown promise for improving the efficiency of electricity production from low-temperature reservoirs (T < 150 °C). However, there has been limited application of these systems to utilize widely available, disperse, waste heat streams for smaller scale power production (1–10 kWe). Factors limiting increased deployment of these systems include large, costly heat exchangers, and concerns over safety of the working fluid. The use of mini- and microchannel (D < 1 mm) heat exchangers has the potential to decrease system size and material cost, while also reducing the working fluid inventory, enabling penetration of Kalina cycles into these new markets. However, accurate methods of predicting the heat and mass transfer in microscale geometries must be available for designing and optimizing these compact heat exchangers. In the present study, the effect of different heat and mass transfer models on the calculated Kalina cycle condenser size is investigated at representative system conditions. A detailed heat exchanger model for a liquid-coupled microchannel ammonia/water condenser is developed. The heat exchanger is sized using different predictive methods to provide the required heat transfer area for a 1 kWe Kalina system with a source and sink temperature of 150 °C and 20 °C, respectively. The results show that for the models considered, predicted heat exchanger size can vary by up to 58%. Based on prior experimental results, a nonequilibrium approach is recommended to provide the most accurate, economically sized ammonia/water condenser.