Experimental and Numerical Investigations on Louvered Fin-and-Tube Heat Exchanger With Variable Geometrical Parameters

Author(s):  
Kourosh Javaherdeh ◽  
Ahmad Vaisi ◽  
Rouhollah Moosavi ◽  
Mehdi Esmaeilpour

The effects of geometrical arrangement on the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics in compact louvered fin-and-tube heat exchangers were studied experimentally and numerically along with ε−NTU method. Different geometrical parameters including louver angle, louver pitch, louver number, the nonlouvered inlet and exit fin length, and redirection of fluid flow are considered to determine their effects on the flow field. The study is performed for different louver angles varying from θL=12 to 60 deg, and optimal heat transfer rate is obtained at louver angle of θL=28deg. Also, it is found that increasing the louver number, NL, on the fin surface enhances the heat transfer performance. It is shown that the average Nusselt number is increased as the louver pitch is decreased and its optimum value is obtained at Lp=0.9 mm. However, comparing to the effect of louver number, the louver pitch has a small effect on the performance of the heat exchanger. Additionally, the optimum values of nonlouvered inlet and exit fin length and redirection length of fin are obtained with different flow conditions.

Author(s):  
G. N. Xie ◽  
M. Zeng ◽  
Q. W. Wang

One of passive enhancement techniques, Extended Surfaces, are commonly employed in many heat exchangers to enlarge the heat transfer area on gases side because of the low heat transfer coefficients, which may be 10 to 100 times smaller than those of liquids side. The use of extended surfaces (or referred to as finned surfaces) will reduce the thermal resistance of gases side. Enhanced heat transfer coefficient will be achieved by using the basic surface geometries: plate-fin and tube-fin. With respect to the tube-fin type heat exchanger, fins may be employed outside tubes (herein called outer-fins) to enhance the heat transfer of shell-side, and alternatively fins may be also employed inside tubes (herein called inner-fins) to increase the intensity of heat transfer of tube-side. The desire to accomplish the gas-to-gas heat exchange through the tubular heat exchangers will lead to develop heat transfer enhancement techniques for outside and inside tubes. Therefore based on integration with such two mechanisms, namely, outer-fins and inner-fins of enhancement heat transfer techniques, a kind of outer-fins and inner-fins tube heat exchanger has been preliminary proposed (ASME-IGTI, Paper No.2006-90260 [20]). Such heat exchanger is potentially used in gas-to-gas heat exchangers, especially used for highpressure operating conditions, where the plate-fin heat exchangers might not be applicable. In general, the design task is a complex trial-and-error process and there is always the possibility that the design results such as geometrical parameters are not the optimum. Therefore, the motivation of this paper is to conduct optimum designs of such heat exchanger (hereafter called Outer-Fins and Inner-Fins tube Heat Exchanger, OFIF HE). A computational intelligent technique, Genetic Algorithm (GA) is applied to search and optimize geometrical parameters of the OFIF HE. The minimum total volume or minimum total annual cost of such OFIF HE is taken as an objective function in the GA respectively. The results show that the optimized OFIF HE provides lower total volume or lower total annual cost than those presented in previous work. The method is universal and may be used for design and optimization of OFIF HEs under different specified duties and design objectives.


2013 ◽  
Vol 832 ◽  
pp. 160-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Alam Khairul ◽  
Rahman Saidur ◽  
Altab Hossain ◽  
Mohammad Abdul Alim ◽  
Islam Mohammed Mahbubul

Helically coiled heat exchangers are globally used in various industrial applications for their high heat transfer performance and compact size. Nanofluids can provide excellent thermal performance of this type of heat exchangers. In the present study, the effect of different nanofluids on the heat transfer performance in a helically coiled heat exchanger is examined. Four different types of nanofluids CuO/water, Al2O3/water, SiO2/water, and ZnO/water with volume fractions 1 vol.% to 4 vol.% was used throughout this analysis and volume flow rate was remained constant at 3 LPM. Results show that the heat transfer coefficient is high for higher particle volume concentration of CuO/water, Al2O3/water and ZnO/water nanofluids, while the values of the friction factor and pressure drop significantly increase with the increase of nanoparticle volume concentration. On the contrary, low heat transfer coefficient was found in higher concentration of SiO2/water nanofluids. The highest enhancement of heat transfer coefficient and lowest friction factor occurred for CuO/water nanofluids among the four nanofluids. However, highest friction factor and lowest heat transfer coefficient were found for SiO2/water nanofluids. The results reveal that, CuO/water nanofluids indicate significant heat transfer performance for helically coiled heat exchanger systems though this nanofluids exhibits higher pressure drop.


2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 137-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafał Andrzejczyk ◽  
Tomasz Muszyński

Abstract The shell and coil heat exchangers are commonly used in heating, ventilation, nuclear industry, process plant, heat recovery and air conditioning systems. This type of recuperators benefits from simple construction, the low value of pressure drops and high heat transfer. In helical coil, centrifugal force is acting on the moving fluid due to the curvature of the tube results in the development. It has been long recognized that the heat transfer in the helical tube is much better than in the straight ones because of the occurrence of secondary flow in planes normal to the main flow inside the helical structure. Helical tubes show good performance in heat transfer enhancement, while the uniform curvature of spiral structure is inconvenient in pipe installation in heat exchangers. Authors have presented their own construction of shell and tube heat exchanger with intensified heat transfer. The purpose of this article is to assess the influence of the surface modification over the performance coefficient and effectiveness. The experiments have been performed for the steady-state heat transfer. Experimental data points were gathered for both laminar and turbulent flow, both for co current- and countercurrent flow arrangement. To find optimal heat transfer intensification on the shell-side authors applied the number of transfer units analysis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 9261
Author(s):  
Yun-Seok Choi ◽  
Youn-Jea Kim

As electrical devices become smaller, it is essential to maintain operating temperature for safety and durability. Therefore, there are efforts to improve heat transfer performance under various conditions, such as using extended surfaces and nanofluids. Among them, cooling methods using ferrofluid are drawing the attention of many researchers. This fluid can control the movement of the fluid in magnetic fields. In this study, the heat transfer performance of a fin-tube heat exchanger, using ferrofluid as a coolant, was analyzed when external magnetic fields were applied. Permanent magnets were placed outside the heat exchanger. When the magnetic fields were applied, a change in the thermal boundary layer was observed. It also formed vortexes, which affected the formation of flow patterns. The vortex causes energy exchanges in the flow field, activating thermal diffusion and improving heat transfer. A numerical analysis was used to observe the cooling performance of heat exchangers, as the strength and number of the external magnetic fields were varying. VGs (vortex generators) were also installed to create vortex fields. A convective heat transfer coefficient was calculated to determine the heat transfer rate. In addition, the comparative analysis was performed with graphical results using contours of temperature and velocity.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
praveen math

Abstract Shell and Tube heat exchangers are having special importance in boilers, oil coolers, condensers, pre-heaters. They are also widely used in process applications as well as the refrigeration and air conditioning industry. The robustness and medium weighted shape of Shell and Tube heat exchangers make them well suited for high pressure operations. The aim of this study is to experiment, validate and to provide design suggestion to optimize the shell and tube heat exchanger (STHE). The heat exchanger is made of acrylic material with 2 baffles and 7 tubes made of stainless steel. Hot fluid flows inside the tube and cold fluid flows over the tube in the shell. 4 K-type thermocouples were used to read the hot and cold fluids inlet and outlet temperatures. Experiments were carried out for various combinations of hot and cold water flow rates with different hot water inlet temperatures. The flow conditions are limited to the lab size model of the experimental setup. A commercial CFD code was used to study the thermal and hydraulic flow field inside the shell and tubes. CFD methodology is developed to appropriately represent the flow physics and the procedure is validated with the experimental results. Turbulent flow in tube side is observed for all flow conditions, while the shell side has laminar flow except for extreme hot water temperatures. Hence transition k-kl-omega model was used to predict the flow better for transition cases. Realizable k- epsilon model with non-equilibrium wall function was used for turbulent cases. Temperature and velocity profiles are examined in detail and observed that the flow remains almost uniform to the tubes thus limiting heat transfer. Approximately 2/3 rd of the shell side flow does not surround the tubes due to biased flow contributing to reduced overall heat transfer and increased pressure loss. On the basis of these findings an attempt has been made to enhance the heat transfer by inducing turbulence in the shel l side flow. The two baffles were rotated in opposite direction to each other to achieve more circulation in the shell side flow and provide more contact with tube surface. Various positions of the baffles were simulated and studied using CFD analysis and th e results are summarized with respect to heat transfer and pressure loss.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1762 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhe Wang ◽  
Fenghui Han ◽  
Yulong Ji ◽  
Wenhua Li

A marine seawater source heat pump is based on the relatively stable temperature of seawater, and uses it as the system’s cold and heat source to provide the ship with the necessary cold and heat energy. This technology is one of the important solutions to reduce ship energy consumption. Therefore, in this paper, the heat exchanger in the CO2 heat pump system with graphene nano-fluid refrigerant is experimentally studied, and the influence of related factors on its heat transfer enhancement performance is analyzed. First, the paper describes the transformation of the heat pump system experimental bench, the preparation of six different mass concentrations (0~1 wt.%) of graphene nanofluid and its thermophysical properties. Secondly, this paper defines graphene nanofluids as beneficiary fluids, the heat exchanger gains cold fluid heat exergy increase, and the consumption of hot fluid heat is heat exergy decrease. Based on the heat transfer efficiency and exergy efficiency of the heat exchanger, an exergy transfer model was established for a seawater source of tube heat exchanger. Finally, the article carried out a test of enhanced heat transfer of heat exchangers with different concentrations of graphene nanofluid refrigerants under simulated seawater constant temperature conditions and analyzed the test results using energy and an exergy transfer model. The results show that the enhanced heat transfer effect brought by the low concentration (0~0.1 wt.%) of graphene nanofluid is greater than the effect of its viscosity on the performance and has a good exergy transfer effectiveness. When the concentration of graphene nanofluid is too high, the resistance caused by the increase in viscosity will exceed the enhanced heat transfer gain brought by the nanofluid, which results in a significant decrease in the exergy transfer effectiveness.


Author(s):  
M. Izadi ◽  
D. K. Aidun ◽  
P. Marzocca ◽  
H. Lee

The effect of geometrical features on the air-side heat transfer and friction characteristics of an industrial plain fin-and-tube heat exchanger is investigated by 3-D numerical modeling and simulations. The heat exchanger has been designed and employed as an intercooler in a gas power plant and is a large-size compact heat exchanger. Most of the available design correlations developed so far for plain fin–and–tube heat exchangers have been prepared for small-size exchangers and none of them fits completely to the current heat exchanger regarding the geometrical limitations of correlations. It is shown that neglecting these limitations and applying improper correlations may generate considerable amount of error in the design of such a large-size heat exchanger. The geometry required for numerical modeling is produced by Gambit® software and the boundary conditions are defined regarding the real operating conditions. Then, three-dimensional simulations based on the SIMPLE algorithm in laminar flow regime are performed by FLUENT™ code. The effect of fin pitch, tube pitch, and tube diameter on the thermo-hydraulic behavior of the heat exchanger is studied. Some variations in the design of the heat exchanger are suggested for optimization purposes. It is finally concluded that the current numerical model is a powerful tool to design and optimize of large-size plain fin-and-tube heat exchangers with acceptable accuracy.


1966 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz J. Schulenberg

Finned circular tubes have been used exclusively in air-cooled heat exchangers built for the American petroleum and chemical industries. In Europe, however, other tube geometries, in particular, finned elliptical tubes, have been used with great success. In this paper, the theory of the finned elliptical tube and its application in air-cooled heat exchangers are discussed. Finned circular and elliptical tubes are compared; it is shown that the developed heat transfer surface alone is not a sufficient criterion for predicting the performance of an air-cooled fin-tube heat exchanger.


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