In order to improve the efficiency of a direct contact heat exchanger for a solar thermal energy system, the working fluid should be dispersed into small and uniform droplets, and stay within a heat exchanger for a long time. Therefore, installation of meshes in a direct contact heat exchanger is suggested in the present study, and the performance of the direct contact heat exchanger with several layers of meshes is experimentally investigated. Diethyl phthalate is used as the working fluid, and the performance of the heat exchanger is tested for several different operating conditions and compared to that of the heat exchanger without meshes. The results of this investigation show that meshes make droplets uniform and small when the flow rate is low. The relationship between the Peclet number and the Nusselt number becomes linear if it is steady. And, the Nusselt number for the direct contact heat exchanger with meshes becomes greater than that without meshes as the Peclet number increases.