PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF CORRUGATED PLATE HEAT EXCHANGER WITH WATER AS WORKING FLUID

Abstract

Heat exchangers are devices that provide the exchange of heat between two same or distinguished fluids that are at different temperature without mixing them with each other. Plate heat exchanger is one such compact heat exchanger, provides more heat transfer between two fluids in comparison with shell and tube heat exchanger. This study is focused on use of corrugated plate heat exchanger (PHE) for water as a working fluid. This research work deals with experimental investigation of corrugated type of PHE with evaluation of convective heat transfer coefficient, overall heat transfer coefficient and exchanger effectiveness. Heat exchanger for carrying out this work consists of thin metal brazed plates of stainless steel with 0.5mm thickness, plates with rectangular geometry and corrugations on plate surface with chevron angle 45 0 /45 0 , plate spacing of 2.24mm and with 14 number of plates. Tests are conducted by varying operating parameters like mass flow rate of hot water, inlet temperatures of hot water. The main objective of this work is to find out effects of these parameters on performance of heat exchangers with parallel and counter flow arrangements. Results show that convective heat transfer coefficient increases with increase in mass flow rate and Reynolds number. Also the effectiveness varies with the mass flow rate of hot water. In this study, maximum effectiveness achieved for parallel flow arrangement with water as a working fluid is 0.67 and that of counter flow arrangement is 0.82. Use of plate heat exchanger is more advantageous than the tube type heat exchanger with same effectiveness as it occupies less space.