Numerical and experimental study of heat transfer in shell-and U-tube heat exchanger with baffles

Abstract

In this paper the numerical and experimental investigations of the shell-and-tube heat transfer are presented. The thermal performance of heat exchangers is predicted with finite volume method by CFD simulations using ANSYS 15.0.1 software. The experimental part includes analyzing the thermal performance for laminar flow of U-tube heat exchanger unit.  The effect of mass flow rate of hot and inclination angle of baffles were studied. The experimental rig for Shell-and-tube heat exchanger is consisting of one pass of warm water flow on the shell side and two passes single tube of cold water. The annular baffles were inserted on shell side, and on the facing distances from the outer surface of the length of tube. Baffles were inserted with staggered position on the shell and tube to achieve good fluid circulation [4]. The tube heat exchanger with different design style of angle inclination baffle (45º, 0º, -45º) with Reynolds number ranging from 100 to 2000 was compared with numerical result. The results show high effect of baffles angles on the heat exchanger performance at high Reynolds number. Maximum heat transfer from hot fluid occurs at baffle with angle 0o. The experimental results show that the increase in the inlet hot mass flow rate led to increase in the heat transfer rate. Also, mass flow rate for shell side played a major role in effectiveness. Furthermore, it can be concluded that 0° baffle inclination angle gives a best performance compared to +45° and -45° inclination angles. All the experimental results were compared with theoretical results which analysis for model as shown in Fig. (1) and good agreement was obtained.