Experimental and Numerical Studies of a Recuperator in Micro Turbines

¹ Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China
² University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

^* Corresponding author’s e-mail: wangyongwei@iet.cn
^** Corresponding author’s e-mail: hxl@iet.cn

Abstract

In this paper, a recuperator model is established to simulate the real working state of the recuperator in the micro turbine. The relative error between simulated and experimental data doesn't exceed 5%, which indicates that the model can better reflect the changing law of the recuperator performance. Therefore, the recuperator model proposed in this paper is reasonable and reliable. In addition, the simulation results indicate that heat transfer efficiency is not sensitive to the change of hot inlet temperature, however, it increases with the decrease of mass flow rate. On the other hand, the decrease of inlet mass flow leads to the relative pressure loss decreased on hot and cold sides.