Experimental Study of Heat Transfer Enhancement in a Heated Tube Caused by Wire-Coil and Rings

Abstract

This study investigates heat transfer characteristics and the pressure drop of a horizontal double pipe heat exchanger with wire coil inserts. The amplification of convection heat transfer coefficient in the heat exchanger reduces the weight, size and cost of heat exchanger. One way of augmenting the heat transfer is to disturb the boundary layer. When an object is placed in a boundary layer, it affects the flow structure and alters the velocity and thermal profiles. The change is affected by the formation of jets and wakes in the boundary layer as it alters modifies transfer and friction coefficients on the wall. This paper studies the characteristics of the heat transfer and the pressure drop of a double pipe horizontal tube heat exchanger with an inserted wire coil and rings. Wire coil acts as a swirl flow, which increases turbulence and roughness whereas rings increase heat transfer as a promoter of turbulence and roughness. The experimental data sets were extracted from wire coils and rings tested within a geometrical range with a pitch of (P/D=1, 2, 4) and wire diameter of (d/D=0.05, 0.07, 0.11). For wire coil with d/D=0.11, P/D =1 and Reynolds number of 10000, the overall enhancement efficiency amounted to 128%.