OK i am curious. how does a Heat Exchanger work? I know that it runs coolant through it. But what keeps it from coming out of the heat exchanger? Does it run through the heat exchanger. I have no clue and cant find anywhere that explains it.

If you know. Shed some light on it.

 

there is 2 end tanks and lines that run between them between the fins, the fins help disapate the heat quickly, plus the more coolant you have in your system the more heat it can take, and also, the faster you can move the coolant the better.

 

A heat exchanger is the most general term given to any device used to transfer heat between two fluids. Remember that a "fluid" is any matter that fills the volume of its container, so it can be liquid or gas.

Every heat exchanger depends on flow from both fluids. One of the fluids is the one the system wants to keep, and hence is usually contained within plumbing. The other fluid is usually a waste coolant, like the fresh air outside that blows through it and then simply flows away.

In the case of a car radiator, (radiator is nothing more then a specific type of exchanger) engine coolant is circulated through it by the water pump. For the moment, don't let the name "coolant" confuse you. Lets just call it "water" for now. It is a constant cycle. Water moves from the engine to the radiator in a constant cycle as driven by the pump. The engine heats the water up, the radiator cools it down. The water itself is called "coolant" due to its purpose in the engine side of that cycle. It draws heat from the engine, hence "cooling" the engine, while the coolant itself is heated up. Then when it flows through the radiator, the radiator draws heat from the coolant, causing the radiator to heat up, and the coolant to cool down.

The last step then is to cool the radiator, which is accomplished by the fresh air outside blowing through it. The entire design is simply to move heat around it a way that it can be controlled. A control device in a typical system is the thermostat. It restricts the flow to maintain a specific minimum temperature (not too cold). But it can't do anything about too much heat. That's why most cars have fans on the radiators (not too hot).

If your car has airconditioning, that system has two heat exhangers as well. The condensor and evaporator. They are both heat exchangers. One to cool the refridgerant, the other to heat it.

To offer some perspective on a different kind of heat exchanger, I'll tell you about the fuel/oil heat exchanger in a jet. Jet fuel has to be above -40 (centigrade or farhenheit, they are the same at -40). But the air temp at 35,000 ft is -55 C. So for it to burn, it has to be heated up first. To accomplish this, most jet engines run the fuel line through a heat exchanger plumbed to the oil system. The cold fuel cools off the oil, and the hot oil warms up the fuel.