Investigation and Development of Proposed General Pressure Drop and Heat Transfer Correlations for Laminar Flow in a Toroidal Coiled Tube System

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Bowman ◽  
Hyunjae Park

In this paper, the laminar flow pressure drop and heat transfer correlations published and applied to plain, coiled tube heat exchanger systems are extensively investigated. It was found that most correlations obtained for toroidal geometric systems have been applied to the analysis of helical and spiral tube systems. While toroidal (and helical) coils have a constant radius of curvature about the coil center-point (and center-line), spiral coils have a continuously varying radius of curvature, in which the flow does not reach a typical fully developed flow condition. The centrifugal forces, arising from the curved flow path, contribute to the enhancement of heat transfer (at the cost of additional pressure drop) over straight tube heat exchangers of the same length. In this paper, using published correlations and available experimental test data for pressure drop and heat transfer in toroidal tube systems, the proposed general correlations are developed by using a filtered-mean multiple regression method. The Coiling Influence Factors for the friction factor and heat transfer, CIFf and CIFh, respectively; defined and used in the authors’ previous works [1,2,3] it was found that the deviations between the proposed and published correlations are within about 3% for friction factor and 5–20% for heat transfer, depending on working fluid. In order to assess the validity of applying the generalized correlations developed in this work for toroidal tube systems, onto other curved tube systems, a numerical analysis of toroidal coil systems, using the commercially available CFD package (Fluent 6) has been explicitly performed. A comparison is made between the CFD result for average heat transfer (CIFh) with that predicted by the proposed general correlation for toroidal coils and available experimental data. As an extension of this work, a comparison of curved tube over straight tube heat exchanger effectiveness is made to highlight its use as a design optimization parameter and motivation for additional coiled tube heat exchanger research.

2012 ◽  
Vol 560-561 ◽  
pp. 156-160
Author(s):  
Lin Ping Lu ◽  
Liang Ying

The experiments on heat transfer coefficient, pressure drop and thermal stress were done to heat exchangers with corrugated tubes and staight tubes. By analyising and comparing the heat transfer coeffient, pressure drop in tube side and shell side and axial force and stress, some conclusions can be conducted that the corrugated tube heat exchanger has better heat transfer coeffient, higher pressure drop and much lower stress caused by temperatur difference, also, it has obvious advantages under the circumstance of low Reynolds number and high temperature difference.


Author(s):  
Mahmoud Abdelmagied

In this study, the thermofluid characteristics of double spirally coiled tube heat exchanger (DSCTHE) were investigated numerically. A three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model was developed using ansys 14.5 software package. To investigate the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of DSCTHE, the Realize k–ε turbulence viscous model had been applied with enhanced wall treatment for simulating the turbulent thermofluid characteristics. The governing equations were solved by a finite volume discretization method. The effect of coil curvature ratio on DSCTHE was investigated with three various curvature ratios of 0.023–0.031 and 0.045 for inner tube side and 0.024–0.032–0.047 for annular side. The effects of addition of Al2O3 nanoparticle on water flows inside inner tube side or annular side with different volume concentrations of 0.5%, 1%, and 2% were also presented. The numerical results were carried out for Reynolds number with a range from 3500 to 21,500 for inner tube side and from 5000 to 24,000 for annular side, respectively. The obtained results showed that with increasing coil curvature ratio, a significant effect was discovered on enhancing heat transfer in DSCTHE at the expense of increasing pressure drop. The results also showed that the heat transfer enhancement was increased with increasing Al2O3 nanofluid concentration, and the penalty of pressure drop was approximately negligible.


Author(s):  
Zhuo Yang ◽  
Tariq Amin Khan ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
Hua Zhu ◽  
Zhijian Sun ◽  
...  

The flow field inside the heat exchangers is associated with maximum heat transfer and minimum pressure drop. Designing a compact heat exchanger and employing various techniques to enhance its overall performance has been widely investigated and still an active research field. However, few researches deal with thermal optimization. The application of elliptic tube is an effective alternative to circular tube which can reduce the pressure drop significantly. In this study, numerical simulation and optimization of variable tube ellipticity is studied at low Reynolds numbers. The three-dimensional numerical analysis and a multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) with surrogate modelling is performed. Two row tubes in staggered arrangement in fin-and-tube heat exchanger is investigated for combination of various elliptic ratio (e = minor axis/major axis) and Reynolds number. Tube elliptic ratio ranges from 0.2 to 1 and Reynolds number ranges from 150 to 750. The tube perimeters are kept constant while changing the elliptic ratio. The numerical model is derived based on continuum flow approach and steady-state conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy. The flow is assumed as incompressible and laminar due to low inlet velocity. Results are presented in the form of Colburn factor, friction factor, temperature contours and streamline contours. Results show that increasing elliptic ratio increases the friction factor due increased flow blocking area, however, the effect on the Colburn factor is not significant. Moreover, tube with lower elliptic ratio followed by higher elliptic ratio tube has better thermal-hydraulic performance. To achieve maximum heat transfer enhancement and minimum pressure drop, the Pareto optimal strategy is adopted for which the CFD results, Artificial neural network (ANN) and MOGA are combined. The tubes elliptic ratio (0.2 ⩽ e ⩽ 1.0) and Reynolds number (150 ⩽ Re ⩽ 750) are the design variables. The objective functions include Colburn factor (j) and friction factor (f). The CFD results are input into ANN model. Once the ANN is computed and its accuracy is checked, it is then used to estimate the model responses as a function of inputs. The final trained ANN is then used to drive the MOGA to obtain the Pareto optimal solution. The optimal values of these parameters are finally presented.


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