Experimental validation and numerical investigation for optimization and evaluation of heat transfer enhancement in double coil heat exchanger

Abstract

The present research focuses on experimental and numerical studies to evaluate how geometrical and operating parameters influence heat transfer of shell and coil heat exchangers. The experiment was initially performed to verify the results of numerical analysis on a shell and single-coil (baseline coil) heat exchanger. Numerical analysis was then conducted to determine the effect of changing the baseline coil to a new double coil configuration on heat transfer enhancement. The results of the presented numerical study showed a good agreement with experimental results with an error rate of 4.6%. In addition, the numerical simulation results were then conducted on a double coil and found that the Nusselt number in a double coil tube was 18.2% greater than that of a single-coil tube at 1800 Reynolds number shell side. Based on the results, the two correlations were developed to predict the Nusselt numbers of shell and coil sides for wide ranges of Reynolds number (400 < Resh < 2000) (11,000 < Rec < 22,000), which also developed to predict the friction factor.