www.iaset.us editor@iaset.us PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF STAGGERED WIRE MESH MATRIX REGENERATIVE HEAT EXCHANGER Arun Kumar 1 & S. K. Verma 2 1 Research Scholar, Department of Mechanical Engineering, NIT, Patna, Bihar, India 2 Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, NIT, Patna, Bihar, India ABSTRACT Numerical analysis of staggered wired mesh matrix (SWMM) regenerative heat exchanger has been done and the performance of SWMM has been evaluated experimentally. The range of parameters considered was Reynolds number from 2208 to 4766 and porosity from 0.83 to 0.88. The experimental results revealed that the effectiveness of heat exchanger decreases with time for uniform mass flow rate and with the increase in mass flow rate for a given time. KEYWORDS: Effectiveness, Performance, Regenerative Heat Exchange (RHE), Staggered Wired Mesh Matrix (SWMM) Article History Received: 07 Aug 2018 | Revised: 18 Aug 2018 | Accepted: 29 Aug 2018 INTRODUCTION A Heat exchanger is a device that is used to transfer thermal energy between two or more fluids, between a solid surface and a fluid, or between solid particulates and a fluid, at different temperatures and in thermal contact. In many heat exchangers, the fluid is separated by a heat transfer surface, and ideally, they do not mix or leak, Such type of heat exchangers are called as direct transfer type or recuperator. Heat exchanger in which there is intermittent heat exchange between the hot and cold fluids via a thermal energy storage and release through the exchanger surface or matrix are referred to as indirect transfer type, or simply regenerators [1]. Regenerative heat exchangers are usually found in high- temperature systems where a portion of the system's fluid is removed from the main process, and then returned. Because the fluid removed from the main process contains energy (heat), the heat from the fluid leaving the main system is used to reheat (regenerate) the returning fluid instead of being rejected to an external cooling medium to improve efficiency. Some of the heat supplied by an external source to working fluid is converted into useful work and while flowing out hot expanded gases from expansion space to the cooler the rest of the heat is stored in a regenerator. After cooling in the cooler and compressing in the compression space gases flows back to expansion space through the regenerator. The stored heat in the regenerator is given back to the working fluid during back-flow. This process is called as regeneration. The efficiency of the Stirling cycle machine depends on the efficiency of the regeneration process or regenerator [2-3]. The schematic diagram of a fixed bed regenerative heat exchanger is shown in Figure 1 International Journal of Mechanical Engineering (IJME) ISSN(P): 2319-2240; ISSN(E): 2319-2259 Vol. 7, Issue 5, Aug - Sep 2018; 11-18 © IASET