Extended surfaces natural convection

When extended surfaces such as fins are used to enhance natural convection heat transfer between a solid and a fluid, the flow rate of the fluid in the vicinity of the solid adjusts itself to incorporate the changes in buoyancy and friction. It is obvious that this enhancement technique will work to advantage only when the increase in btroyancy is greater than the additional friction introduced. One does not need to be concerned with pressure drop or pumping power when studying natural convection since no pumps or blowers are used in (his case. Therefore, an enhancement technique in natural convection is evaluated on heat transfer performance alone. 

Tlie fin is the most common fonn of extended surface, associated with both tubular and plate-type heat exchangers - the car radiator is a highly compact finned unit. Most heat exchangers used in gas streams have fins to improve the gas-side heat transfer. Compact units such as the plate-fin heat exchanger have fins, or secondary surfaces , between each pair of plates. Fins are used in both natural and forced convection. They are also used, when they are sometimes called ribs, to aid boiling or to provide drainage... 

The use of these natural fluorescence techniques offers not only the possibility of studying the interaction of proteins with membranes, under convective and diffusive conditions, but also they may be easily extended to studies involving proteins and other porous materials such as chromatography media. The areas of application of these techniques will range from polypeptide and protein fractionation to the monitoring of systems where protein-surface interactions are relevant. 

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