Experimental Study of Thermal Performance of Coil in Shell Heat Exchanger

Abstract

Background/Objectives: An experimental investigation and a numerical study of characteristics of heat transfer of coil in shell heat exchanger is performed. Methods/Statistical Analysis: The effects of the change in shape of tube on the heat transfer are studied here. For this, a helical coil was designed and manufactured. The difference of this study from previous ones is that the geometry of the coil is different. Existing studies used only single stretch of helical coil but in this case there are two sets of helical coil connected by a small straight tube. The heat exchanger designed is of counter follow configuration to maximize the amount of heat transferred. In the experiment, keeping constant the flow rate of shell side, the side flow rate was kept on changing and for each tube side flow rate readings were taken for different temperatures. Wilson plots were plotted for obtaining the values of convective coefficient of heat transfer. Findings: The experimental set up was validated; the values for friction factor and Nusselt number were within agreeable limits of theoretical values. A numerical study of the heat exchanger was carried out using FLUENT. Applications/Improvements: The results obtain from FLUENT supports the value obtained from the experiment.