Patent 7251926 was granted and assigned to Hitachi on August, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A plate-fin type regenerative heat exchanger is provided which can prevent clogging of a flow passage caused by a drift of liquid phase water even when compressed air contains a large amount of moisture and liquid droplets. The plate-fin type regenerative heat exchanger comprises a corrugated fin channel for heating compressed air containing liquid droplets and a corrugated fin channel to which the compressed air containing no liquid droplets is supplied. A pitch of fin members of the former corrugated fin channel is set to the Laplace length, whereby bridging of the liquid droplets between the fin members can be prevented.