A numerical study on the use of liquid metals (gallium and mercury) as agents to enhance heat transfer from hot water in a co-flow mini-channel system

Enhancement in the heat removal from hot water co-flowing in a mini-channel in a direct contact manner with two liquid metals, gallium and mercury, is investigated numerically. Results show that the liquid metals lead to superior heat removal from hot water coflowing in the channel as compared to the case when only water flows in the channel. Moreover, it is found that gallium yields higher heat removal from water than mercury by about 15 %. This percentage, representing the superiority of gallium over mercury increases to about 20 % under conditions when the mass flow rate of both the liquid metal and the co-flowing water are doubled. The results reported showed numerical mesh independence. However, the results show much dependence on the spatial discretization scheme adopted where it is found that first order upwind scheme yields somewhat over predicted heat exchange rates in the channel, as compared with the case when a second order scheme is used. It is found further that the channel efficiency in removing heat from the water is remarkable in the first half of the overall channel length where in general the heat removed in the first 10 mm of the channel length is found to be about 70 % of the total heat removed. This percentage is a bit less than that when only water flows in the channel.