An Experimental Study of Fouling Effect on the Heat Transfer Around a Tube in Staggered Tube Banks

Abstract

An experimental study has been performed to investigated the forced convection heat transfer characteristics of 6 circular cylinders in staggered arrangement in a cross flow of air. The water scale deposited on condenser wall of power plant was used to investigate the effect of roughness of scaled surfaces. The relative roughness*average diameter of scale/cylinder diameter) was in a range of k/d=0.0066, 0.0111, 0.0167, 0.0222 and 0.0278. The cylinder spacings(L/d) varies from 1.5 to 4.0 where L denote the cylinder spacings along and normal to the upstream uniform flow direction. The Reynolds number was varied in a range of 10, 000 Re 50,000. The local and mean Nusselt numbers were investigated as a function of scale roughness, the cylinder spacing and Reynolds number. The results are compared with those of clean cylinder and inline tube bank, subsequently the mean fouling resistance over the entire circumference was estimated from those results as a function of scale roughness, the cylinder spacing and Reynolds number.