Abstract
A trapezoidal plate-fin exchanger has been designed and developed, and an experimental test rig fabricated to test the plate fin heat exchanger. The heat exchanger was constructed in a 5 layer cross-flow arrangement. The length of the trapezoidal fins between the layers were 380mm and its height, thickness, top width and bottom width were 40mm, 0.5mm, 20mm, and 80mm respectively. A hot fluid test has been conducted to determine the thermo- hydraulic performance of the given heat exchanger at different mass flow rates (4.975 kg/s to 9.751 kg/s) at a hot inlet temperature of 369K. The values of the effectiveness obtained were plotted against the corresponding values mass flow rate to compare and evaluate the variation of the results. Thus, the performance of a heat exchanger with trapezoidal fins has been studied experimentally and it has been determined that: the mass flow rate of the fluids is proportional to the temperature drop of the fluids after passing through the exchanger. Also Increase in mass flow rate, increases the effectiveness of the heat exchanger. Improper insulation influenced heat transfers in heat exchanger cores and caused energy imbalance in the heat exchanger. This study suggests that the calculated effectiveness of 0.98 using trapezoidal plate fin heat exchanger result provides benchmark data to evaluate and predicts the performance of a plate-fin heat exchanger with trapezoidal fins for energy recovery application. Keywords: Heat exchanger development; trapezoidal fin, effectiveness, heat exchanger analysis; hot and cold fluids DOI : 10.7176/JETP/9-8-03 Publication date: November 30 th 2019
Highlights
A heat exchanger is a device used to transfer heat between a solid object and a fluid, or between two or more fluids
The classic example of a heat exchanger is found in an internal combustion engine in which a circulating fluid known as engine coolant flows through radiator coils and air flows past the coils, which cools the coolant and heats the incoming air
2.0 Materials and Method The materials used for the development of the experimental test rig were selected based on the functions and properties of the components, its cost was considered
Summary
Design or sizing of heat exchangers can be done in two ways. It can either be done by determination of the heat exchanger dimensions for a specified heat transfer and pressure drop performance or by tentatively specifying the dimensions and calculating the performance for comparison with the specified performance. The later was used in this project work using a correlation developed by Joshi and Webb (1987) for the design of plate-fin heat exchangers
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