Analysis of increase in efficiency of air-cooled heat exchangers due to intensification of heat exchange

Abstract

Currently, the issues of improving the heat transfer processes in air-cooled heat exchangers play a huge role in terms of increasing the cooling efficiency and thus reducing the size of heat exchangers. This significantly saves resources. There are several basic methods for increasing the heat transfer of fluids in air coolers, for example, such as: finning of tubes and heat exchange intensification with the help of tube inserts. The purpose of the study is to analyze the efficiency of different fin types and the use of tube inserts, as well as changes in the heat transfer coefficients of air and natural gas, depending on the changes in the types of fins and tube inserts, and their geometry. The application software is Xchanger Suite provided by the company HTRI to ITMO University. The result is the optimally selected geometry of the heat exchange intensifiers based on the analysis, what allows reducing the dimensions of the air- cooled heat exchangers, while providing the necessary heat load, the heat exchange surface reserve coefficient and the heat transfer coefficients.