Effect of Face-Area Ratio on Heat-Exchanger Pressure Drops, Size and Weight

Author(s):  
David Gordon Wilson

Designers of heat exchangers of all types normally have several degrees of freedom even while meeting the specified effectiveness exactly. One freedom is that of choosing the face-area ratios for the two (or more) fluids. A principal reason for choosing face-area ratio is to arrive at desired pressure drops for the fluids. The lowest pressure drop is not always beneficial: a low pressure drop can produce highly non-uniform flow that would degrade heat-exchanger performance. Obviously a high pressure drop penalizes system performance directly. In this paper it is shown that choosing face-area ratio is a good tool up to a point, one at which penalties in the form of increased size and cost of the overall heat exchanger begin to outweigh the benefits. This paper reports studies on the effects of choosing face-area ratios on rotary regenerative heat exchangers, but most results are applicable to fixed-surface recuperative heat exchangers also. However, one significant difference between the two types is that gas-turbine regenerators have short flow lengths, the thickness of the disk or drum. A short flow length is a virtue, because it reduces the regenerator disk volume and mass. But the disk thickness must not be allowed to be reduced to the point where there is substantial “short-circuit” thermal conduction between the hot and cold faces of a regenerator. These and other aspects of heat-exchanger design are explored in general and by means of examples, and design guidelines are suggested.

Author(s):  
Christopher Chi-Ming Chu ◽  
Robert Hieng Yik Tie ◽  
Md. Mizanur Rahman

Effective Plume-Chimney Height (EPCH) was a factor engineers used to design and analyse the performance of natural convection in air-cooled heat exchangers particularly in the event of power outage. To date the number of papers in the open literature presenting data on natural convection performance of air-cooled heat exchangers is scarce. The aim of this study is to corroborate the experimental results and theoretical predictions of Effective Plume-Chimney Height (EPCH) using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in a laboratory-scale air cooled heat exchanger of 457mm × 457mm face area and an industrial-scale test rig of 2.4m × 6.0m face area forced draft air-cooled heat exchanger comprising of a bundle with 4 rows of annular finned tubes in staggered formation operating under natural convection. The CFD software Phoenics 2015 was employed to simulate the electrically-heated air-cooled heat exchanger fitted with a top screen which was built to study the aerodynamics of natural convection of air-cooled heat exchangers. The CFD geometry arrangement and dimensions were schematic in nature, where errors introduced were considered reasonably negligible. The laboratory-scale exchanger model experimental pressure drop data was found to have an insignificant effective plume-chimney height, as predicted by a theoretical equation. It was found that EPCH values calculated from CFD results agree closely to within −0.11m and +0.06m with both experiments and the theoretical prediction, confirming the same conclusion reached in an earlier report. However, for an industrial-scale test rig (ITR) in forced draft mode of large face dimensions the EPCH had been found to be non-negligible in an earlier work. Significant values of theoretical effective plume-chimney height were inserted in the heat transfer and pressure drop simulation that appeared to yield results that agreed with the experimental heat loads. The CFD simulations on the ITR have confirmed the existence of significant effective plume-chimney heights at more than 100 percent of the bundle depth, or the chimney height. The implication is that a solid-walled chimney can appear to have an efficiency of more than 100 per cent, if cold inflow can be prevented or the penetration to the central core hindered. Since the validation of the existence of EPCH by CFD here has used only a set of data from a single source, it is worthwhile to produce more experimental data and analysis to establish the concept for better predictions of air-cooled heat exchanger natural convection performance.


2010 ◽  
Vol 160-162 ◽  
pp. 1622-1627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hai Yang Sun ◽  
Cai Fu Qian

In this paper, the flow characteristics of the whole-rounded enlarged-hole baffle heat exchangers are experimentally studied with the stress on the shell-side pressure drops. It is found that the shell-side pressure drops for the whole-rounded baffles with the enlarged holes are greatly decreased. Compared with the square layout, the enlarged-hole whole-rounded baffles in the case of triangle layout is even more effective in decreasing the pressure drop. The shell-side pressure drops for the heat exchangers with the enlarged-hole whole-rounded baffles are proportional to the square of the flow rate.


1977 ◽  
Vol 99 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Bejan

The thermal design of counterflow heat exchangers for gas-to-gas applications is based on the thermodynamic irreversibility rate or useful power no longer available as a result of heat exchanger frictional pressure drops and stream-to-stream temperature differences. The irreversibility (entropy production) concept establishes a direct relationship between the heat exchanger design parameters and the useful power wasted due to heat exchanger nonideality. The paper presents a heat exchanger design method for fixed or for minimum irreversibility (number of entropy generation units NS). In contrast with traditional design procedures, the amount of heat transferred between streams and the pumping power for each side become outputs of the NS design approach. To illustrate the use of this method, the paper develops the design of regenerative heat exchangers with minimum heat transfer surface and with fixed irreversibility NS.


2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
P K Nema ◽  
A K Datta

A static heat exchanger was used to study the extent of heat induced fouling in the device due to passage of cow, buffalo, double toned and reconstituted milk for a period of one hour. The static heat exchanger was developed to simulate the flow condition of an actual indirect type heat exchanger employed in the processing plant. Flow rate of 2x10-7 m3 s-1 was selected as this gave the same 1.052x10-3 m3 m-2 flow rate/surface area ratio as applicable to indirect double tube heat exchangers used in the industry. Both milk with fat and with fat removed by centrifugal separation were used. Fresh and recycled milk were the other two factors used in the study of fouling. It was found that there was no significant difference in fouling deposit formation between fresh and recycled milk, but significant difference existed between milk with fat and milk with fat removed. Reconstituted milk was found to have significantly lower deposit compared to cow, buffalo and double toned milk.


Author(s):  
Chien-Yuh Yang ◽  
Chun-Ta Yeh ◽  
Wei-Chi Liu ◽  
Bing-Chwen Yang

Owing to the rapid development of semiconductor industry, the heat dissipated from electronic devices increases drastically with increasing device logic gate number and operation speed. The cooling technologies have undergone evolutionary changes from air cooled fin geometry to copper base and vapor chamber heat spreader and to more thorough methods such as forced convective liquid cooling in recent years. Three micro heat exchangers with long offset strip, short offset strip and chevron flow path based on the conventional heat transfer enhancement concepts were designed, fabricated and tested. A straight channel heat exchanger was also made for comparison. The test results show that there is no significant difference of the thermal resistance at various heating power for each heat exchanger. The chevron channel heat exchanger provides the lowest thermal resistance. However, its pressure drop is also the highest. It is approximately 250% higher than that for other three heat exchangers. The offset strip heat exchangers provide better thermal performance than the straight channel heat exchanger does. The performance of heat exchanger with shorter strip is better than that of heat exchanger with longer strip. Further improvement such as optimum strip length design or streamlined strip shape may be applied to reduce its flow pressure drop.


2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiuyi Liu ◽  
Caifu Qian ◽  
Huifang Li

Thermal stress is an important factor influencing the strength of a heat exchanger tubesheet. Some studies have indicated that, even in floating-head or U-tube heat exchangers, the thermal stress at the tubesheet is significant in magnitude. For exploring the value, distribution, and the influence factors of the thermal stress at the tubesheet of these kind heat exchangers, a tubesheet and triangle arranged tubes with the tube diameter of 25 mm were numerically analyzed. Specifically, the thermal stress at the tubesheet center is concentrated and analyzed with changing different parameters of the tubesheet, such as the temperature difference between tube-side and shell-side fluids, tubesheet diameter, thickness, and the tube-hole area ratio. It is found that the thermal stress of the tubesheet of floating-head or U-tube heat exchanger was comparable in magnitude with that produced by pressures, and the distribution of the thermal stress depends on the tube-hole area and the temperature inside the tubes. The thermal stress at the center of the tubesheet surface is high when tube-hole area ratio is very low. And with increasing the tube-hole area ratio, the stress first decreases rapidly and then increases linearly. A formula was numerically fitted for calculating the thermal stress at the tubesheet surface center which may be useful for the strength design of the tubesheet of floating-head or U-tube heat exchangers when considering the thermal stress. Numerical tests show that the fitted formula can meet the accuracy requirements for engineering applications.


1977 ◽  
Vol 99 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. P. Singh ◽  
M. Holtz

In shell and tube heat exchangers, the triple segmental baffle arrangement has been infrequently used, even though the potential of this baffle system for high thermal effectiveness with low pressure drop is generally known. This neglect seems to stem from the lack of published design guidelines on the subject. Lately, however, with the rapid growth in the size of nuclear heat exchangers, the need to develop unconventional baffling pattern has become increasingly important. A method to effectively utilize the triple segmental concept to develop economical designs is presented herein. The solution technique given in this paper is based on a flow model named “Piecewise Continuous Cosine Model.” The solution procedure easily lends itself to detailed analysis to determine safety against flow-induced vibrations.


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.


1988 ◽  
Vol 110 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Halle ◽  
J. M. Chenoweth ◽  
M. W. Wambsganss

Throughout the life of a heat exchanger, a significant part of the operating cost arises from pumping the heat transfer fluids through and past the tubes. The pumping power requirement is continuous and depends directly upon the magnitude of the pressure losses. Thus, in order to select an optimum heat exchanger design, it is is as important to be able to predict pressure drop accurately as it is to predict heat transfer. This paper presents experimental measurements of the shellside pressure drop for 24 different segmentally baffled bundle configurations in a 0.6-m (24-in.) diameter by 3.7-m (12-ft) long shell with single inlet and outlet nozzles. Both plain and finned tubes, nominally 19-mm (0.75-in.) outside diameter, were arranged on equilateral triangular, square, rotated triangular, and rotated square tube layouts with a tube pitch-to-diameter ratio of 1.25. Isothermal water tests for a range of Reynolds numbers from 7000 to 100,000 were run to measure overall as well as incremental pressure drops across sections of the exchanger. The experimental results are given and correlated with a pressure drop versus flowrate relationship.


Heat exchangers are prominent industrial applications where engineering science of heat transfer and Mass transfer occurs. It is a contrivance where transfer of energy occurs to get output in the form of energy transfer. This paper aims at finding a solution to improve the thermal performance in a heat exchanger by using passive method techniques. This experimental and numerical analysis deals with finding the temperature outlets of cold and hot fluid for different mass flow rates and also pressure drop in the tube and the annular side by adding an elliptical leaf strip in the pipe at various angles. The single elliptical leaf used in experiment has major to minor axes ratios as 2:1 and distance of 50 mm between two leaves are arranged at different angular orientations from 0 0 to 1800 with 100 intervals. Since it’s not possible to find the heat transfer rates and pressure drops at every orientation of elliptical leaf so a generalized regression neural network (GRNN) prediction tool is used to get outputs with given inputs to avoid experimentation. GRNN is a statistical method of determining the relationship between dependent and independent variables. The values obtained from experimentation and GRNN nearly had precise values to each other. This analysis is a small step in regard with encomiastic approach for enhancement in performance of heat exchangers


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