Numerical study of heat transfer and exergy analysis of shell and double tube heat exchanger

Abstract

The heat exchanger (HX) plays a key role for several industries, to reduce the energy consumption by rising heat transfer rate through heat exchanger. In this study, numerical simulation of shell and double tube heat exchanger without and with baffles is analyzed to evaluate the heat transfer and exergy analysis. A numerical simulation of 3D model with turbulent flow at the range (4000-12000) is performed with commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software ANSYS (Fluent). The circular vents baffles model is used at the side of the shell. The simulation results show that the circular vents on the baffles of the heat exchanger have a significant impact on thermal- hydraulic performance and exergy analysis. Also, the results show that the heat exchanger effectiveness with baffles increases by 17% at high Reynolds number comparing with heat exchanger without baffles. Besides, the highest value of exergy loss reached to 42W with baffles presence. Finally, it is concluded that the heat exchanger with baffles gives better hydraulic and thermal performance than that of heat exchanger without baffles.