CFD ANALYSIS FOR HEAT TRANSFER AND PRESSURE DROP IN TUBE BUNDLE OF CROSS-FLOW HEAT EXCHANGER

Abstract

In the present work, the preliminary finding of possibilities of heat transfer and pressure drop is reported across the shell and tube arrangement cross-flow heat exchanger. The heat exchanger consists of cold-water flows through the bundle of circular tubes and hot air across the shell. Like in the conventional arrangement, the flow in adjacent rows of tubes is normal to the fluid flow in the shell in the cross-flow arrangement. The three-dimensional turbulent flow region is modelled by employing ANSYS FLUENT 21.0. The standard k-ε model is used to model the turbulence flow. A SIMPLE algorithm scheme is applied to link the pressure and velocity fields inside the domain for air fluids. The heat transfer in the water inside the tubes is represented by a convective boundary condition. The tube flow Reynolds number was fixed at 2200 and the shell flow Reynolds number was varied from 6000 to 10000 in the turbulent zone. The purpose of this paper is to determine temperature reduction and pressure drop across the tube bundle. The simulation will predict the temperature of the airstream at the heat exchanger exit and the pressure drop. The results indicated that there is a significant amount of temperature drop in the air that releases the heat due to forced convection and temperature drop continues in the turbulent region of the incoming fluid.