- Heat exchangers enable a transfer of
thermal energy from a high-energy working fluid to a
low-energy fluid. In the counter-current heat exchanger,
the hot and cold fluids flow in opposite directions,
which minimizes the temperature differential between the
fluids at any given point and thus the resulting
irreversibility. In the co-current heat exchanger, the
fluids flow in the same direction. You can use the
co-current heat exchanger to investigate the gain in
efficiency achieved via the counter-current design, but
you need not choose one or the other; the simple
heat-exchanger model will calculate the exchange of
energy via First Law constraints.
- Possible assumptions: Co-current,
counter-current, isobaric hot-side, isobaric cold-side
