Design and analysis of a two-stage piston compressor and its intercooler

Two-stage reciprocating compressors are frequently used devices in industry, and the improvement of cooling between the stages of these devices significantly affects the performance and energy consumption of the devices. Heat exchangers are used to reduce compressor energy consumption and increase the energy efficiency of the system by intercooling. In this study, a detailed design is performed for a two-stage piston type air compressor used to produce compressed air In addition, a heat exchanger is designed for intercooling between the stages of the two-stage compressor. Thermal analyzes are performed for three different models obtained by using shell and tube type heat exchanger. As a result of the simulations, the most suitable model has been selected and evaluated from thermodynamics point of view. The design of the two-stage piston type air compressor has been made in the MATLAB SIMULINK program. Thermal analyzes, on the other hand, have been performed using ANSYS program. The method used and the model created in this study provide simplicity in both compressor design and testing of different types of heat exchangers. This study enables determining the heat exchanger with the best performance depending on the design parameters of the compressor.