Innovative Design of Waste Heat Recovery Heat Exchangers

Resumo

© 2024 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.Decarbonization of the aviation sector is a key factor for current and future systems. Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) may be used to convert waste energy to electric power by using a bottoming cycle, which can reduce the overall fuel requirement of the airplane. One of the potential bottoming cycles for aircraft application is a Supercritical CO2 (sCO2) power system. The sCO2 power system has advantages because of the component compactness, which is crucial for aircraft integration. However, the main challenge for aircraft integration is the size and weight of the heat exchangers. The present work focuses on the performance of the Supercritical CO2 power system in both current and next-generation aircraft engines considering an innovative and advanced design of the sCO2 heat exchangers (cooler and primary heat exchanger). The first part of the work is focused on the analysis of the sCO2 WHR system for an aircraft engine. The second part of the work is focused on a detailed heat exchanger selection, design and optimization based on the aircraft engine parameters. The results show the potential of WHR utilization, which may generate an additional 100 - 200 kW. However, the heat exchangers may increase overall weight of the aircraft. For this reason, an advanced design is necessary.