Abstract Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger (PCHE) is a widely used heat exchanger in the supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) Brayton cycle because it can work under high temperature and pressure, and has been a hot topic in Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) projects for use as recuperators and condensers. Most previous studies focused on channel structures or shapes. However, no clear advancement has so far been seen in the allover size of the PCHE. In this paper, we proposed an optimal size of the PCHE with a fixed volume. Two boundary conditions of PCHE were simulated, respectively. When the volume of PCHE was fixed, the heat transfer rate and pressure loss were picked as the optimization objectives. The Pareto front was obtained by the Multi-objective optimization procedure. We got the optimized number of PCHE channels under two different boundary conditions from the Pareto front. The comprehensive performance can be increased by 5.3% while holding in the same volume. The numerical results from this study can be used to improve the design of PCHE with straight channels.

中文翻译：

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超临界CO2布雷顿循环直通道PCHE尺寸的优化

摘要 印刷电路换热器（PCHE）是一种广泛应用于超临界二氧化碳（sCO2）布雷顿循环的换热器，因为它可以在高温高压下工作，一直是下一代核电站（NGNP）项目的热门话题。用作换热器和冷凝器。以前的大多数研究都集中在通道结构或形状上。然而，到目前为止，PCHE 的整体规模还没有明显的进步。在本文中，我们提出了具有固定体积的 PCHE 的最佳大小。分别模拟了 PCHE 的两个边界条件。当PCHE的体积固定时，选择传热率和压力损失作为优化目标。帕累托前沿是通过多目标优化程序获得的。我们从帕累托前沿得到了两种不同边界条件下的优化 PCHE 通道数。在保持相同体积的情况下，综合性能可提高5.3%。本研究的数值结果可用于改进直通道 PCHE 的设计。