Development and Application of a Plugging Margin Evaluation Method Taking Into Account the Fouling of Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchangers

Author(s):  
Kyeong Mo Hwang ◽  
Tae Eun Jin

As the operating time of heat exchangers progresses, fouling caused by water-borne deposits and the number of plugged tubes increase and thermal performance decreases. Both fouling and tube plugging are known to interfere with normal flow characteristics and to reduce thermal efficiencies of heat exchangers. The heat exchangers of Korean nuclear power plants have been analyzed in terms of heat transfer rate and overall heat transfer coefficient as a means of heat exchanger management. Except for fouling resulting from the operation of heat exchangers, all the tubes of heat exchangers have been replaced when the number of plugged tubes exceeded the plugging criteria based on design performance sheet. This paper describes a plugging margin evaluation method taking into account the fouling of shell-and-tube heat exchangers. The method can evaluate thermal performance, estimate future fouling variation, and consider current fouling level in the calculation of plugging margin. To identify the effectiveness of the developed method, fouling and plugging margin evaluations were performed at a component cooling heat exchanger in a Korean nuclear power plant.

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2737
Author(s):  
Francesca Ceglia ◽  
Adriano Macaluso ◽  
Elisa Marrasso ◽  
Maurizio Sasso ◽  
Laura Vanoli

Improvements in using geothermal sources can be attained through the installation of power plants taking advantage of low and medium enthalpy available in poorly exploited geothermal sites. Geothermal fluids at medium and low temperature could be considered to feed binary cycle power plants using organic fluids for electricity “production” or in cogeneration configuration. The improvement in the use of geothermal aquifers at low-medium enthalpy in small deep sites favours the reduction of drilling well costs, and in addition, it allows the exploitation of local resources in the energy districts. The heat exchanger evaporator enables the thermal heat exchange between the working fluid (which is commonly an organic fluid for an Organic Rankine Cycle) and the geothermal fluid (supplied by the aquifer). Thus, it has to be realised taking into account the thermodynamic proprieties and chemical composition of the geothermal field. The geothermal fluid is typically very aggressive, and it leads to the corrosion of steel traditionally used in the heat exchangers. This paper analyses the possibility of using plastic material in the constructions of the evaporator installed in an Organic Rankine Cycle plant in order to overcome the problems of corrosion and the increase of heat exchanger thermal resistance due to the fouling effect. A comparison among heat exchangers made of commonly used materials, such as carbon, steel, and titanium, with alternative polymeric materials has been carried out. This analysis has been built in a mathematical approach using the correlation referred to in the literature about heat transfer in single-phase and two-phase fluids in a tube and/or in the shell side. The outcomes provide the heat transfer area for the shell and tube heat exchanger with a fixed thermal power size. The results have demonstrated that the plastic evaporator shows an increase of 47.0% of the heat transfer area but an economic installation cost saving of 48.0% over the titanium evaporator.


Author(s):  
Dimitrios M. Zarkadas ◽  
Baoan Li ◽  
Kamalesh K. Sirkar

Plastic heat exchangers are characterized by an inferior thermal performance compared to their metal counterparts. Therefore, their usage is mainly limited to handling corrosive media or when ultra high purity is required, e.g., pharmaceutical industry. Polymeric Hollow Fiber Heat Exchangers (PHFHEs) have recently been proposed [1] as a new type of heat exchanger that can overcome these constraints and offer the same or better thermal performance than metallic shell and tube or plate heat exchangers while occupying a much smaller volume. In this paper we report our results for heat transfer in PHFHEs with both parallel and cross flow in the shell side of the device. Fibers made of polypropylene (PP) and polyetheretherketone (PEEK) were tested. In addition, steam condensation studies in PHFHEs are reported for the first time. The overall heat transfer coefficients achieved for water-water and water-brine systems are as high as 1400 Wm−2K−1. These values are higher than any value reported for plastic heat exchangers and comparable with commonly acceptable design values for metal shell and tube heat exchangers. Similar coefficients were obtained for steam condensation. Polymeric hollow fiber heat exchangers can also achieve high thermal effectiveness, large number of transfer units (NTU) and very small height of a transfer unit (HTU), if properly rated. If designed like commercial membrane contactors, they can achieve up to 12 transfer units in a single device, not longer than 60–70 cm! In addition, the conductance per unit volume PHFHEs achieved was up to one order of magnitude higher compared to metal heat transfer equipment. This superior thermal performance is also accompanied by considerably lower pressure drops. Therefore, the operation of PHFHEs will be characterized by a low operating cost. Combined with the much lower cost, lower weight and elimination of metal contamination polymer materials offer, it is obvious that PHFHEs constitute a potential substitute for metal heat exchangers on both thermal performance and economical grounds. Possible application fields include the food, pharmaceutical and biomedical industries as well as applications where corrosion resistant, light and very efficient devices are required, i.e., desalination, solar and offshore heat transfer applications.


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


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.


Entropy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 1143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Fontaine ◽  
Takeshi Yasunaga ◽  
Yasuyuki Ikegami

Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) uses the natural thermal gradient in the sea. It has been investigated to make it competitive with conventional power plants, as it has huge potential and can produce energy steadily throughout the year. This has been done mostly by focusing on improving cycle performances or central elements of OTEC, such as heat exchangers. It is difficult to choose a suitable heat exchanger for OTEC with the separate evaluations of the heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop that are usually found in the literature. Accordingly, this paper presents a method to evaluate heat exchangers for OTEC. On the basis of finite-time thermodynamics, the maximum net power output for different heat exchangers using both heat transfer performance and pressure drop was assessed and compared. This method was successfully applied to three heat exchangers. The most suitable heat exchanger was found to lead to a maximum net power output 158% higher than the output of the least suitable heat exchanger. For a difference of 3.7% in the net power output, a difference of 22% in the Reynolds numbers was found. Therefore, those numbers also play a significant role in the choice of heat exchangers as they affect the pumping power required for seawater flowing. A sensitivity analysis showed that seawater temperature does not affect the choice of heat exchangers, even though the net power output was found to decrease by up to 10% with every temperature difference drop of 1 °C.


2015 ◽  
Vol 787 ◽  
pp. 72-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Naveen Prabhu ◽  
M. Suresh

Nanofluids are fluids containing nanometer-sized particles of metals, oxides, carbides, nitrides, or nanotubes. They exhibit enhanced thermal performance when used in a heat exchanger as heat transfer fluids. Alumina (Al2O3) is the most commonly used nanoparticle due to its enhanced thermal conductivity. The work presented here, deals with numerical simulations performed in a tube-in-tube heat exchanger to study and compare flow characteristics and thermal performance of a tube-in-tube heat exchanger using water and Al2O3/water nanofluid. A local element-by-element analysis utilizing e-NTU method is employed for simulating the heat exchanger. Profiles of hot and cooling fluid temperatures, pressure drop, heat transfer rate along the length of the heat exchanger are studied. Results show that heat exchanger with nanofluid gives improved heat transfer rate when compared with water. However, the pressure drop is more, which puts a limit on the operating conditions.


Author(s):  
Fadi A. Ghaith ◽  
Ahmed S. Izhar

This paper aims to enhance the thermal performance of an industrial shell-and-tube heat exchanger utilized for the purpose of cooling raw natural gas by means of mixture of Sales gas. The main objective of this work is to provide an optimum and reliable thermal design of a single-shelled finned tubes heat exchanger to replace the existing two- shell and tube heat exchanger due to the space limitations in the plant. A comprehensive thermal model was developed using the effectiveness-NTU method. The shell-side and tube-side overall heat transfer coefficient were determined using Bell-Delaware method and Dittus-Boelter correlation, respectively. The obtained results showed that the required area to provide a thermal duty of 1.4 MW is about 1132 m2 with tube-side and shell-side heat transfer coefficients of 950 W/m2K and 495 W/m2K, respectively. In order to verify the obtained results generated from the mathematical model, a numerical study was carried out using HTRI software which showed a good match in terms of the heat transfer area and the tube-side heat transfer coefficient.


Author(s):  
Majid Amidpour ◽  
Abazar Vahdat Azad

In this paper, the new approach of Constructal theory has been employed to design shell and tube heat exchangers. Constructal theory is a new method for optimal design in engineering applications. The purpose of this paper is optimization of shell and tube heat exchangers by reduction of total cost of the exchanger using the constructal theory. The total cost of the heat exchanger is the sum of operational costs and capital costs. The overall heat transfer coefficient of the shell and tube heat exchanger is increased by the use of constructal theory. Therefore, the capital cost required for making the heat transfer surface is reduced. Moreover, the operational energy costs involving pumping in order to overcome frictional pressure loss are minimized in this method. Genetic algorithm is used to optimize the objective function which is a mathematical model for the cost of the shell and tube heat exchanger and is based on constructal theory. The results of this research represent more than 50% reduction in costs of the heat exchanger.


Author(s):  
Adrian S. Sabau ◽  
Ali H. Nejad ◽  
James W. Klett ◽  
Adrian Bejan ◽  
Kivanc Ekici

In this paper, a novel geometry is proposed for evaporators that are used in Organic Rankine Cycles. The proposed geometry consists of employing successive plenums at several length-scale levels, creating a multi-scale heat exchanger. The channels at the lowest length-scale levels were considered to have their length given by the thermal entrance-length. Numerical simulations based on turbulent flow correlations for supercritical R134a and water were used to obtain performance indicators for new heat exchangers and baseline heat exchangers. The relationship between the size of the channels at one level, k, with respect to the size of the channels at the next level, k + 1, is based on generalization of the “Murray’s law.” In order to account for the variation of the temperature and heat transfer coefficient in the entrance region, a heat transfer model was developed. The variation of the brine and refrigerant temperatures along each pipe was considered. Using the data on pumping power and weight of metal structures, including that of all the plenums and piping, the total present cost was evaluated using a cost model for shell-and-tube heat exchangers. In addition to the total present cost, the data on overall thermal resistance is also used in identifying optimal heat exchanger configurations. The main design variables include: tube arrangement, number of channels fed from plenum, and number of rows in the tube bank seen by the outside fluid. In order to assess the potential improvement of the new evaporator designs, baseline evaporators were designed. The baseline evaporator designs include long tubes of the same diameter as those of the lowest length-scale levels, placed between one inlet and one outlet. The baseline evaporator designs were created from the new evaporator designs by simply removing most of the internal plenums employing tubes much longer than their entrance length, as they would currently be used. Consistent with geothermal applications, the performance of new heat exchanger designs was compared to that of baseline heat exchanger designs at the same flow rates. For some operating conditions it was found that the new heat exchangers outperform their corresponding baseline heat exchangers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 945 (1) ◽  
pp. 012058
Author(s):  
Sayshar Ram Nair ◽  
Cheen Sean Oon ◽  
Ming Kwang Tan ◽  
S.N. Kazi

Abstract Heat exchangers are important equipment with various industrial applications such as power plants, HVAC industry and chemical industries. Various fluids that are used as working fluid in the heat exchangers such as water, oil, and ethylene glycol. Researchers have conducted various studies and investigations to improve the heat exchanger be it from material or heat transfer point of view. There have been attempts to create mixtures with solid particles suspended. This invention had some drawbacks since the pressure drop was compromised, on top of the occurrence of sedimentation or even erosion, which incurs higher maintenance costs. A new class of colloidal suspension fluid that met the demands and characteristics of a heat exchanger was then created. This novel colloidal suspension mixture was then and now addressed as “nanofluid”. In this study, the usage of functionalized graphene nanoplatelet (GNP) nanofluids will be studied for its thermal conductivity within an annular conduit with angled fins, which encourage swirling flows. The simulation results for the chosen GNP nanofluid concentrations have shown an enhancement in thermal conductivity and heat transfer coefficient compared to the corresponding base fluid thermal properties. The data from this research is useful in industrial applications which involve heat exchangers with finned tubes.


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