Review on the characteristics of flow and heat transfer in printed circuit heat exchangers

Printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) is a compact heat exchanger with a series of advantages, such as, high ability of heat transfer, bearing high pressure and low temperature, etc., and it presents potential application in the field of new generation of nuclear power, solar thermal power generation, and hydrogen energy in recent years. In such a development situation, this review categorizes and summarizes the recent development related to the characteristics of flow and heat transfer in PCHEs based on results from experiments and numerical simulations. It is shown that present studies are limited to single-phase flow with supercritical carbon dioxide or helium as the working fluid. So, some problems still exist to be investigated, such as, the actual evolution of flow and temperature field, multi-phase flow, high Reynolds-number flow, etc. Finally, it points out some research topics for PCHEs in the future.