CFD Simulation of Fin-and-Tube Heat Exchanger with Louvered Fin Configuration: Technical Note

Author(s):  
M. Sabari ◽  
D. Channankiah ◽  
D. Shivalingappa

Heat exchanger plays a major role in almost all mechanical industries. Enhancement of heat transfer surface plays major role in numerous applications such as in heat exchangers, refrigeration and air conditioning systems etc. This paper examines the fluid flow and heat exchange on the air side of a multi-row fin-and-tube heat exchanger. A brief comparison is given between fin-and-tube heat exchanger attributes with louvered fins in a wider range of operating conditions defined by inlet air velocities. The brief representation on the calculated data for the louvered heat exchanger shows better heat transfer characteristics with a slightly higher pressure drop. The CFD procedure is validated by comparing the numerical simulation results with different inlet air velocities. Best combination of higher heat transfer and minimum pressure drop are occurred in inlet air velocity of 2.5 m/s.

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):  
J Bala Bhaskara Rao ◽  
V Ramachandra Raju ◽  
BBVL Deepak

Almost all thermal/chemical industries are equipped with heat exchangers in order to enhance the thermal efficiency. The performance of a shell and tube heat exchanger depends significantly on the design parameters like the tube cross-sectional area, tube orientation, baffle cut, etc. However, there are no specific relationships among these parameters to obtain an optimal design, such that the heat transfer rate is maximized and the pressure drop is minimized. Therefore, experimental and numerical simulations are carried out for a heat exchanger at various process parameters. Heat exchanger considered in this investigation is a single shell-multiple pass type device. For the performed experimental datasets, a generalized regression neural network is applied to generate a relation among the input and output process parameters.


2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Swanand Gaikwad ◽  
Ashish Parmar

AbstractHeat exchangers possess a significant role in energy transmission and energy generation in most industries. In this work, a three-dimensional simulation has been carried out of a shell and tube heat exchanger (STHX) consisting of segmental baffles. The investigation involves using the commercial code of ANSYS CFX, which incorporates the modeling, meshing, and usage of the Finite Element Method to yield numerical results. Much work is available in the literature regarding the effect of baffle cut and baffle spacing as two different entities, but some uncertainty pertains when we discuss the combination of these two parameters. This study aims to find an appropriate mix of baffle cut and baffle spacing for the efficient functioning of a shell and tube heat exchanger. Two parameters are tested: the baffle cuts at 30, 35, 40% of the shell-inside diameter, and the baffle spacing’s to fit 6,8,10 baffles within the heat exchanger. The numerical results showed the role of the studied parameters on the shell side heat transfer coefficient and the pressure drop in the shell and tube heat exchanger. The investigation shows an increase in the shell side heat transfer coefficient of 13.13% when going from 6 to 8 baffle configuration and a 23.10% acclivity for the change of six baffles to 10, for a specific baffle cut. Evidence also shows a rise in the pressure drop with an increase in the baffle spacing from the ranges of 44–46.79%, which can be controlled by managing the baffle cut provided.


Author(s):  
Abdulkerim Okbaz ◽  
Ali Pınarbaşı ◽  
Ali Bahadır Olcay

In the present study, 3-D numerical simulations on heat and fluid flow characteristics of double-row multi-louvered fins heat exchanger are carried out. The heat transfer improvement and the corresponding pressure drop amounts were investigated depending on louver angles in the range of 20° ≤θ≤ 30°, louver pitches of Lp = 2,7mm, 3,5mm and 3,8mm and frontal velocities of Uin between 1.22 m/s and 3 m/s. The results are reported in terms of Colburn j-factor, Fanning friction factor f and area goodness factor j/f based on louver angle, louver pitch and Reynolds number. To understand local behavior of flow around louvered fins and heat exchanger tubes, flow visualization results of velocity vectors and stream-lines with temperature counters are presented. It is investigated that increasing louver angle enhances convective heat transfer while hydraulic performance decreases due to increased pressure drop. The flow noticeably behaves louver directed for all louver angles The flow can easily travel between different fins. This case study has been done to design and manufacture an industrial louver fin heat exchanger.


Author(s):  
Josua P. Meyer ◽  
Leon Liebenberg ◽  
Jonathan A. Olivier

Heat exchangers are usually designed in such a way that they do not operate in the transition region. This is usually due to a lack of information in this region. However, due to design constraints, energy efficiency requirements or change of operating conditions, heat exchangers are often forced to operate in this region. It is also well known that entrance disturbances influence where transition occurs. The purpose of this paper is to present experimental heat transfer and pressure drop data in the transition region for fully developed and developing flows inside smooth tubes using water as the working fluid. The use of different inlet disturbances were used to investigate its effect on transition. A tube-in-tube heat exchanger was used to perform the experiments, which ranged in Reynolds numbers from 1 000 to 20 000, with Prandtl numbers being between 4 and 6 while Grashof numbers were in the order of 105. Results showed that the type of inlet disturbance could delay transition to a Reynolds number as high as 7 000, while other inlets expedited it, confirming results of others. For heat transfer, though, it was found that transition was independent of the inlet disturbance and all commenced at the same Reynolds number, 2 000–3 000, which was attributed to secondary flow effects.


Author(s):  
M. Izadi ◽  
D. K. Aidun ◽  
P. Marzocca ◽  
H. Lee

The effect of geometrical features on the air-side heat transfer and friction characteristics of an industrial plain fin-and-tube heat exchanger is investigated by 3-D numerical modeling and simulations. The heat exchanger has been designed and employed as an intercooler in a gas power plant and is a large-size compact heat exchanger. Most of the available design correlations developed so far for plain fin–and–tube heat exchangers have been prepared for small-size exchangers and none of them fits completely to the current heat exchanger regarding the geometrical limitations of correlations. It is shown that neglecting these limitations and applying improper correlations may generate considerable amount of error in the design of such a large-size heat exchanger. The geometry required for numerical modeling is produced by Gambit® software and the boundary conditions are defined regarding the real operating conditions. Then, three-dimensional simulations based on the SIMPLE algorithm in laminar flow regime are performed by FLUENT™ code. The effect of fin pitch, tube pitch, and tube diameter on the thermo-hydraulic behavior of the heat exchanger is studied. Some variations in the design of the heat exchanger are suggested for optimization purposes. It is finally concluded that the current numerical model is a powerful tool to design and optimize of large-size plain fin-and-tube heat exchangers with acceptable accuracy.


Author(s):  
S. V. Sridhar ◽  
R. Karuppasamy ◽  
G. D. Sivakumar

Abstract In this investigation, the performance of the shell and tube heat exchanger operated with tin nanoparticles-water (SnO2-W) and silver nanoparticles-water (Ag-W) nanofluids was experimentally analyzed. SnO2-W and Ag-W nanofluids were prepared without any surface medication of nanoparticles. The effects of volume concentrations of nanoparticles on thermal conductivity, viscosity, heat transfer coefficient, fiction factor, Nusselt number, and pressure drop were analyzed. The results showed that thermal conductivity of nanofluids increased by 29% and 39% while adding 0.1 wt% of SnO2 and Ag nanoparticles, respectively, due to the unique intrinsic property of the nanoparticles. Further, the convective heat transfer coefficient was enhanced because of improvement of thermal conductivity of the two phase mixture and friction factor increased due to the increases of viscosity and density of nanofluids. Moreover, Ag nanofluid showed superior pressure drop compared to SnO2 nanofluid owing to the improvement of thermophysical properties of nanofluid.


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