CFD Analysis of the Effect of Mass Flow Rate in a Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger Design

Abstract

Heat exchangers are often found in the chemical process industry, but of all types of heat exchangers, the Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger (STHE) are the most used. The design of shell and tube heat exchangers are continually evolving because of it reduce production costs. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was employed using SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation version 2022 to model the effect of operating parameter such as the mass flow rate on the pressure drop, heat transfer coefficient and the turbulence intensity. The turbulence model adopted for the simulation was the k–ɛ turbulence model incorporating the boundary conditions. Three conditions were studied increasing both shell and tube side mass flow rate, maintaining either the shell or tube constant and then varying the other. The results obtained showed that an increase in mass flow rate have tremendous effect on the pressure drop, heat transfer and turbulence intensity.