Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics of a Novel Heat Exchanger
Computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer simulations are conducted for a novel shell-tube type heat exchanger. The heat exchanger consists of tube with a narrow slot oriented in the streamwise direction. Numerical simulations are conducted for the Reynolds number of 1500. The 3D turbulent flow in the tube bank region is modeled by k-ε Reynolds stress averaging method by employing ANSYS FLUENT. 3-D transient flow and heat transfer simulations are conducted to determine the flow structure and temperature profiles in the wake of cylinders in the first row and other rows. The effects of the slot size and the orientation and the arrangement of the cylinder in different configuration will be examined. The slotted tube heat exchanger improved heat transfer by more than 27% compare to the traditional shell-tube heat exchanger without slots. Enhancement in heat transfer is even higher at higher values of Reynolds number.