Thermal integration of SOFC and plate heat exchanger desorber

A Plate Heat Exchanger (PHE) desorber is thermally integrated with an SOFC stack via a specially designed tube in tube heat exchanger with internal fins in which thermal oil is heated to the required desorber temperature and then serves as the coupling fluid in the PHE desorber. A modelling approach has been adopted where the PHE desorber is solved for heat and mass transfer using MATLAB & EES and the tube in tube heat exchanger with internal fins has been modelled and optimized using COMSOL multiphysics. The results show that the PHE desorber is able to produce the required quantity of refrigerant needed for a 1 kW cooling load. The use of PHEs as desorbers not only gives a high heat transfer surface area but also leads to considerable reduction in desorber volume when compared to conventional falling film desorbers.