Heat Transfer Characteristics of Particle and Air Flow Through Additively Manufactured Lattice Frame Material Based on Octet-Shape Topology

Particle-to-supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO₂) heat exchanger is a critical component in next-generation concentrating solar power (CSP) plants. The inherently low heat transfer between falling particles and sCO₂ imposes a challenge toward economic justification of levelized cost of electricity produced through solar energy. Introduction of integrated porous media with the walls bounding particle flow has the potential to enhance the overall particle-to-sCO₂ heat exchanger performance. This paper presents an experimental study on heat transfer characterization of additively manufactured lattice frame material based on Octet-shaped unit cell with particles and air as working fluids. The lattice structures were additively manufactured in stainless steel (SS) 316L and SS420 (with 40% bronze infiltration) via Binder jetting process, where the lattice porosities were varied between 0.75 and 0.9. The mean particle diameters were varied from 266 μm to 966 μm. The effective thermal conductivity and averaged heat transfer coefficient were determined through steady-state experiments. It was found that the presence of lattice enhances the effective thermal conductivity by 2–4 times when compared to packed bed of particles alone. Furthermore, for gravity-assisted particle flow through lattice panel, significantly high convective heat transfer coefficients ranging from 200 W/m²K to 400 W/m²K were obtained for the range of particle diameters tested. The superior thermal transport properties of Octet-shape-based lattice frame for particle flow makes it a very promising candidate for particle-to-sCO₂ heat exchanger for CSP application.