Innovative design of microstructured plate-and-frame heat exchangers

The current chapter provides a non-comprehensive overview about innovative design aspects for microstructured heat exchangers focussing on an enhancement of the heat transfer at minimum increase of the pressure drop. It turns out that smooth deviations of the flow from the original direction are required to achieve this goal while more severe interference of the flow as it is achieved through irregular structures such as foams leads to higher pressure drop penalties compared to the enhancement of the heat transfer when compared on a dimensionless basis. When designing such devices on the smaller scale, it is mandatory to take into account the effect of axial heat transfer which might deteriorate the heat exchanger performance considerably. Cheap fabrication techniques are required to allow the practical application of such devices, which then have a multitude of potential applications from process industry to aerospace.