Heat transfer and pressure drop performance of twisted oval tube heat exchanger

Abstract

Twisted oval tube heat exchanger is a type of heat exchanger that aims at improving the heat transfer coefficient of the tube side and also decreasing the pressure drop of the shell side. In the present work, tube side and shell side heat transfer and pressure drop performances of a twisted oval tube heat exchanger has been experimentally studied. The tube side study shows that the tube side heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop in a twisted oval tube are both higher than in a smooth round tube. The shell side study shows that the lower the modified Froude number FrM, the higher the shell side heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop. In order to comparatively analyze its shell side performance of the heat exchanger, a rod baffle heat exchanger with similar size of the twisted oval tube heat exchanger is designed and its performance is calculated with Gentry's method. The comparative study shows that the heat transfer coefficient of the twisted oval tube heat exchanger is higher and the pressure drop is lower than the rod baffle heat exchanger. In order to evaluate the overall performance of the twisted oval tube heat exchanger, a performance evaluation criterion considering both the tube side and shell side performance of a heat exchanger is proposed and applied. The analyze of the overall performance of the twisted oval tube shows that the twisted oval tube heat exchangers works more effective at low tube side flow rate and high shell side flow rate.