Ultra-scalable and Resilient Etched Metal Enhancements for Enhanced Refrigerant-Side Heat Transfer in HVAC Equipment

Dr. Miljkovic has developed microstructured aluminum (Al) tubes with increased heat transfer rates of 240% during refrigerant flow boiling. Highly conformal are generated by a scalable etching technique. The cost-effective techniques used to create etched-Al microstructures stand to significantly reduce manufacturing cost and time required for current enhancement approaches such as extrusion, drawing, and welding. At the same time increased performance is ensured on the thermal side. In addition, the fabricated etched structures are highly durable due to structure formation based on the base metal, and therefore do not suffer from thermal expansion coefficient mismatch issues, as is the case with other enhancements.