Flow and heat transfer enhancement in tube heat exchangers

Abstract

The performance of heat exchangers can be improved to perform a certain heat-transfer duty by heat transfer enhancement techniques. Enhancement techniques can be divided into two categories: passive and active. Active methods require external power, such as electric or acoustic field, mechanical devices, or surface vibration, whereas passive methods do not require external power but make use of a special surface geometry or fluid additive which cause heat transfer enhancement. The majority of commercially interesting enhancement techniques are passive ones. This paper presents a review of published works on the characteristics of heat transfer and flow in finned tube heat exchangers of the existing patterns. The review considers plain, louvered, slit, wavy, annular, longitudinal, and serrated fins. This review can be indicated by the status of the research in this area which is important. The comparison of finned tubes heat exchangers shows that those with slit, plain, and wavy finned tubes have the highest values of area goodness factor while the heat exchanger with annular fin shows the lowest. A better heat transfer coefficient ha is found for a heat exchanger with louvered finned and thus should be regarded as the most efficient one, at fixed pumping power per heat transfer area. This study points out that although numerous studies have been conducted on the characteristics of flow and heat transfer in round, elliptical, and flat tubes, studies on some types of streamlined-tubes shapes are limited, especially on wing-shaped tubes (Sayed Ahmed et al. in Heat Mass Transf 50: 1091–1102, 2014; in Heat Mass Transf 51: 1001–1016, 2015). It is recommended that further detailed studies via numerical simulations and/or experimental investigations should be carried out, in the future, to put further insight to these fin designs.