scholarly journals Fouling of Polymeric Hollow Fiber Heat Exchangers by Air Dust

Materials ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 4931
Author(s):  
Ilya Astrouski ◽  
Miroslav Raudensky ◽  
Tereza Kudelova ◽  
Tereza Kroulikova

Currently, liquid-to-gas heat exchangers in buildings, domestic appliances and the automotive industry are mainly made of copper and aluminum. Using plastic instead of metal can be very beneficial from an economic and environmental point of view. However, it is required that a successful plastic design meets all the requirements of metal heat exchangers. The polymeric hollow fiber heat exchanger studied in this work is completive to common metal finned heat exchangers. Due to its unique design (the use of thousands of thin-walled microtubes connected in parallel), it achieves a high level of compactness and thermal performance, low pressure drops and high operation pressure. This paper focuses on an important aspect of heat exchanger operation—its fouling in conditions relevant to building and domestic application. In heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and automotive and domestic appliances, outdoor and domestic dust are the main source of fouling. In this study, a heat exchanger made of polymeric hollow fibers was tested in conditions typical for indoor HVAC equipment, namely with the 20 °C room air flowing through the hot water coil (water inlet 50 °C) with air velocity of 1.5 m/s. ASHRAE test dust was used as a foulant to model domestic dust. A polymeric heat exchanger with fibers with an outer diameter of 0.6 mm (1960 fibers arranged into 14 layers in total) and a heat transfer area of 0.89 m2 was tested. It was proven that the smooth polypropylene surface of hollow fibers has a favorable antifouling characteristic. Fouling evolution on the metallic heat transfer surfaces of a similar surface density was about twice as quick as on the plastic one. The experimental results on the plastic heat exchanger showed a 38% decrease in the heat transfer rate and a 91% increase in pressure drops after eighteen days of the experiment when a total of 4000 g/m2 of the test dust had been injected into the air duct. The decrease in the heat transfer rate of the heat exchanger was influenced mainly by clogging in the frontal area because the first layers were fouled significantly more than the deeper layers.

Energies ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 400
Author(s):  
Miftah Altwieb ◽  
Rakesh Mishra ◽  
Aliyu M. Aliyu ◽  
Krzysztof J. Kubiak

Multi-tube multi-fin heat exchangers are extensively used in various industries. In the current work, detailed experimental investigations were carried out to establish the flow/heat transfer characteristics in three distinct heat exchanger geometries. A novel perforated plain fin design was developed, and its performance was evaluated against standard plain and louvred fins designs. Experimental setups were designed, and the tests were carefully carried out which enabled quantification of the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics. In the experiments the average velocity of air was varied in the range of 0.7 m/s to 4 m/s corresponding to Reynolds numbers of 600 to 2650. The water side flow rates in the tubes were kept at 0.12, 0.18, 0.24, 0.3, and 0.36 m3/h corresponding to Reynolds numbers between 6000 and 30,000. It was found that the louvred fins produced the highest heat transfer rate due to the availability of higher surface area, but it also produced the highest pressure drops. Conversely, while the new perforated design produced a slightly higher pressure drop than the plain fin design, it gave a higher value of heat transfer rate than the plain fin especially at the lower liquid flow rates. Specifically, the louvred fin gave consistently high pressure drops, up to 3 to 4 times more than the plain and perforated models at 4 m/s air flow, however, the heat transfer enhancement was only about 11% and 13% over the perforated and plain fin models, respectively. The mean heat transfer rate and pressure drops were used to calculate the Colburn and Fanning friction factors. Two novel semiempirical relationships were derived for the heat exchanger’s Fanning and Colburn factors as functions of the non-dimensional fin surface area and the Reynolds number. It was demonstrated that the Colburn and Fanning factors were predicted by the new correlations to within ±15% of the experiments.


Author(s):  
Ahmad Fakheri

In this paper, it is shown that the Arithmetic Mean Temperature Difference, which is the difference between the average temperatures of hot and cold fluids, can be used instead of the Log Mean Temperature Difference (LMTD) in heat exchanger analysis. For a given value of AMTD, there exists an optimum heat transfer rate, Qopt, given by the product of UA and AMTD such that the rate of heat transfer in the heat exchanger is always less than this optimum value. The optimum heat transfer rate takes place in a balanced counter flow heat exchanger and by using this optimum rate of heat transfer, the concept of heat exchanger efficiency is introduced as the ratio of the actual to optimum heat transfer rate. A general algebraic expression as well as a chart is presented for the determination of the efficiency and therefore the rate of heat transfer for parallel flow, counter flow, single stream, as well as shell and tube heat exchangers with any number of shells and even number of tube passes per shell. In addition to being more intuitive, the use of AMTD and the heat exchanger efficiency allow the direct comparison of the different types of heat exchangers.


Author(s):  
Muhammad Ansab Ali ◽  
Tariq S. Khan ◽  
Ebrahim Al Hajri

The quest to achieve higher heat transfer rate, smaller size and minimum pressure drop is a main area of focus in the design of heat exchangers. Plate heat exchangers are one of viable candidates to deliver higher heat duties but still have a drawback of higher pressure drop due to long restricted flow path. Motivated by demand of miniaturization and cost reduction, a novel design of tubular microchannel heat exchanger for single phase flow employing ammonia water mixture is proposed. Numerical simulation of unit fluid domain is conducted in ANSYS Fluent. Parametric study of the different flow geometries is evaluated in terms of Nusselt number and pressure drop. The salient features of the design include ultra-compact size with higher heat transfer rate and acceptable pressure drop.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fard Haghshenas ◽  
Mohammad Talaie ◽  
Somaye Nasr

The plate and concentric tube heat exchangers are tested by using the water-water and nanofluid-water streams. The ZnO/Water (0.5%v/v) nanofluid has been used as the hot stream. The heat transfer rate omitted of hot stream and overall heat transfer coefficients in both heat exchangers are measured as a function of hot and cold streams mass flow rates. The experimental results show that the heat transfer rate and heat transfer coefficients of the nanofluid in both of the heat exchangers is higher than that of the base liquid (i.e., water) and the efficiency of plate heat exchange is higher than concentric tube heat exchanger. In the plate heat exchanger the heat transfer coefficient of nanofluid at mcold = mhot = 10 gr/sec is about 20% higher than base fluid and under the same conditions in the concentric heat exchanger is 14% higher than base fluid. The heat transfer rate and heat transfer coefficients increases with increase in mass flow rates of hot and cold streams. Also the CFD1 code is used to simulate the performance of the mentioned heat exchangers. The CFD results are compared to the experimental data and showed good agreement. It is shown that the CFD is a reliable tool for investigation of heat transfer of nanofluids in the various heat exchangers.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seyed Alireza Ghazanfari ◽  
Malan Abdul Wahid

Heat transfer rate, pressure loss and efficiency are considered as the most important parameters in designing compact heat exchangers. Despite different types of heat exchangers, fin-and-tube compact heat exchangers are still common device in different industries due to the diversity of usage and the low space installation need. The efficiency of the compact heat exchanger can be increased by introducing the fins and increasing the heat transfer rate between the surface and the surroundings. Numerous modifications can be applied to the fin surface to increase heat transfer. Delta-winglet vortex generators (VGs) are known to enhance the heat transfer between the energy carrying fluid and the heat transfer surfaces in plate-fin-and-tube banks, but they have drawbacks as well. They increase the pressure loss and this should be considered. In this paper, the thermal efficiency of compact heat exchanger with VGs is investigated in different variations. The angle of attack, the length and horizontal and vertical position of winglet are the main parameters to consider. Numerical analyses are carried out to examine finned tube heat exchanger with winglets at the fin surface in a relatively low Reynolds number flow for the inline tube arrangements. The results showed that the length of the winglet significantly affects the improvement of heat transfer performance of the fin-and-tube compact heat exchangers with a moderate pressure loss penalty. In addition, the results show that the optimization cannot be performed for one criterion only. More parameters should be considered at the same time to run the process properly and improve the heat exchanger efficiency.


Author(s):  
Ahmad Fakheri

The heat exchanger efficiency is defined as the ratio of the actual heat transfer in a heat exchanger to the optimum heat transfer rate. The optimum heat transfer rate, qopt, is given by the product of UA and the Arithmetic Mean Temperature Difference, which is the difference between the average temperatures of hot and cold fluids. The actual rate of heat transfer in a heat exchanger is always less than this optimum value, which takes place in an ideal balanced counter flow heat exchanger. It has been shown that for parallel flow, counter flow, and shell and tube heat exchanger the efficiency is only a function of a single nondimensional parameter called Fin Analogy Number. The function defining the efficiency of these heat exchangers is identical to that of a constant area fin with an insulated tip. This paper presents exact expressions for the efficiencies of the different cross flow heat exchangers. It is shown that by generalizing the definition of Fa, very accurate results can be obtained by using the same algebraic expression, or a single algebraic expression can be used to assess the performance of a variety of commonly used heat exchangers.


Author(s):  
Ahmad Fakheri

The heat exchanger efficiency is defined as the ratio of the actual heat transfer in a heat exchanger to the optimum heat transfer rate. The optimum heat transfer rate, qopt, is given by the product of UA and the Arithmetic Mean Temperature Difference, which is the difference between the average temperatures of hot and cold fluids. The actual rate of heat transfer in a heat exchanger is always less than this optimum value, which takes place in a balanced counter flow heat exchanger. It is shown that for parallel flow, counter flow, and shell and tube heat exchanger the efficiency is only a function of a single nondimensional parameter called Fin Analogy Number. Remarkably, the functional dependence of the efficiency of these heat exchangers on this parameter is identical to that of a constant area fin with an insulated tip. Also a general algebraic expression as well as a generalized chart is presented for the determination of the efficiency of shell and tube heat exchangers with any number of shells and even number of tube passes per shell, when the Number of Transfer Units (NTU) and the capacity ratio are known. Although this general expression is a function of the number of shells and another nondimensional group, it turns out to be almost independent of the number of shells over a wide range of practical interest. The same general expression is also applicable to parallel and counter flow heat exchangers.


Author(s):  
Hossein Arasteh ◽  
Mohammad Reza Salimpour ◽  
Mohammad Reza Tavakoli

PurposeIn the present research, a numerical investigation is carried out to study the fluid flow and heat transfer in a double-pipe, counter-flow heat exchanger exploiting metal foam inserts partially in both pipes. The purpose of this study is to achieve the optimal distribution of a fixed volume of metal foam throughout the pipes which provides the maximum heat transfer rate with the minimum pressure drop increase.Design/methodology/approachThe governing equations are solved using the finite volume method. The metal foams are divided into different number of parts and positioned at different locations. The number of metal foam parts, their placements and their volume ratios in each pipe are sought to reach the optimal conditions. The four-piece metal foam with optimized placement and partitioning volume ratios is selected as the best layout. The effects of the permeability of metal foam on the Nusselt number, the performance evaluation criteria (PEC) and the overall heat transfer coefficient are investigated.FindingsIt was observed that the heat transfer rate, the overall heat transfer coefficient and the effectiveness of the heat exchanger can be improved as high as 69, 124 and 9 per cent, respectively, while the highest value of PEC is 1.36.Practical implicationsPorous materials are widely used in thermo-fluid systems such as regenerators, heat sinks, solar collectors and heat exchangers.Originality/valueHaving less pressure drop than fully filled heat exchangers, partially filled heat exchangers with partitioned metal foams distributed optimally enhance heat transfer rate more economically.


2013 ◽  
Vol 448-453 ◽  
pp. 3259-3269
Author(s):  
Zhi Wei Li ◽  
Hong Zhou He ◽  
Huang Huang Zhuang

The characteristics of the external heat exchanger (EHE) for a 4 MWth circulation fluidized bed combustor were studied in the present paper. The length, width and height of EHE were 1.5 m, 0.8 m and 9 m, respectively. The circulating ash flow passing the heating surface bed could be controlled by adjusting the fluidizing air flow and the heating transferred from the circulating ash to the cooling water. The ash flow rate passing through the heat transfer bed was from 0.4 to 2.2 kg/s. The ash average temperature was from 500 to 750 °C. And the heat transfer rate between the ash and the cooling water was between 150 and 300 W/(m2·°C). The relationships among the circulating ash temperature, the heat transfer, heat transfer rate, the heat transfer coefficient and the circulating ash flow passing through the heating exchange cell were also presented and could be used for further commercial EHE design.


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