Heat Transfer Characteristics in a Double-Pipe Heat Exchanger Equipped with Coiled Circular Wires

Abstract

An experimental investigation has been carried out to study the enhancement in heat transfer coefficient by inserting coiled wire around the outer surface of the inner tube of the double-pipe heat exchanger. Insulated wires, with a circular cross-section of 2 mm diameter, forming a coil of different pitches (p = 6, 12, and 20 mm), were used as turbulators. The investigation is performed for turbulent water flow in a double-pipe heat exchanger with cold water in the annulus space for both parallel and counter flows. The experiments were performed for Reynolds numbers ranging from 4,000 to 14,000. The experimental results reveal that the use of coiled circular wires leads to a considerable increase in heat transfer coefficients compared with a smooth wall tube for both parallel and counter water flows. The mean Nusselt number increases with Reynolds number and pitch. The convective heat transfer coefficient for a turbulent water flow increases for all coiled wire pitches, with the highest enhancement of about 450% for counter flow and 400% for the parallel flow. New correlations for mean relative Nusselt numbers at different coiled wire pitches are provided.