Reduces refrigerant charge to one-third for lower environmental impact and enhanced safety

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TOKYO: 6503) announced today that it has developed a plate heat exchanger for heat pump cooling and heating equipment with industry-leading heat transfer performance – triple that of conventional models. Specifically, the new heat exchanger reduces the number of plate layers allowing the refrigerant charge to be reduced to approximately one-third that of conventional levels, resulting in lower environmental impact and improved safety.

The urgent need to achieve carbon neutrality has led to stricter refrigerant regulations, requiring a shift to next-generation refrigerants and a reduction in the refrigerant charge in heat pump cooling and heating equipment. While next-generation refrigerants like R32 have a lower Global Warming Potential (GWP), many are flammable, making it essential to minimize their volume to reduce the danger of accidental leaks. Although increasing heat transfer performance reduces the refrigerant charge, conventional heat exchangers with grooved plates perform insufficiently. Inserting micro-offset fins between the flat plates was considered to promote heat transfer, but tests confirmed that the refrigerant’s gas-liquid two-phase flow does not distribute uniformly across an entire plate.

Mitsubishi Electric’s new plate heat exchanger has distribution channels at the fluid inlets and outlets that ensure uniform refrigerant flow across plates, even those fitted with micro-offset fins. The result is an even distribution of gas-liquid two-phase flow refrigerant. Channel placement was optimized using proprietary analysis technology that simulates the complex flow of two-phase refrigerants between fine fins. As a result, Mitsubishi Electric has achieved industry-leading heat transfer performance, approximately three times that of conventional heat pump-type cooling and heating equipment.

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