The Effect of Internal Solidification on Turbulent Flow Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop in a Horizontal Tube

A simple analysis of the steady-state heat transfer and pressure drop in turbulent flow in a tube is presented for the case involving a “thin”, steady-state frozen deposit on the inside tube wall. Sparrow-Hallman-Siegel type internal flow convective heat transfer expressions and Blasius type pressure drop expressions are employed while neglecting second order interface curvature effects. Experimental heat transfer and pressure drop data are presented for comparison. It is shown that simple analyses of the type developed can be used to predict heat transfer and pressure drop in tube flow under freezing conditions and that, for the experimental conditions tested, basic agreement between theory and experiment was obtained. It is also shown experimentally that small nonuniformities in wall temperature can produce wide variations in pressure drop when a frozen layer exists within a tube.