“A Particulate-Flow Heat Exchanger Inspired by Gas Diffusion in Lung Capillaries”
Fatemeh Hassanipour, Southern Methodist University
Wednesday, April 29, 11 a.m., TI Auditorium
Abstract
Future advances in many engineering applications are critically dependent on increasingly efficient heat-transfer technologies. One example is the cooling of electronic components, which is crucial for many commercial, military and space applications. This talk presents a new paradigm in heat transfer that uses phase-change materials and is inspired at the system level by the biological processes in the mammalian lung. The new heat exchanger is based on an analogy with alveolar capillaries, where red blood cells flow with blood plasma to yield very high gas transfer efficiency. Motivated by an analysis and numerical study of this biological system, and using the duality between gas diffusion and heat transfer equations, we propose a new cooling concept that uses encapsulated phase-change particles flowing with water in a parallel-plate mini-channel. This concept is carefully studied and verified via analysis, numerical simulation and extensive experimentation. Improvements on the order of 27% to 44% in heat transfer efficiency are obtained. For the implementation of this system, a novel heat exchanger was designed that has a pump-free circulation of particulate flow (patent pending). Time permitting, a second project will also be briefly discussed involving the behavior of vortex flows inside porous media.
Bio
Fatemeh Hassanipour received her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from SMU in 2009. Her research interests are in the broad area of thermofluids, in particular bio-inspired heat exchangers, phase-change materials and porous media. In addition she has industrial experience in the area of HVAC and refinery piping and is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Texas. She is a recipient of the ASHRAE Peanut Vinther award (2005), the SMU Mechanical Engineering Department’s Best Research Award (2008) and Best Graduate Student Award (2008), and the ASME North Texas Section Student Award (2008).
