Numerical Simulation of Thermo-hydraulic Behaviour of Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger Equipped with Segmental Baffle and Helical Baffle

Abstract

The baffle type and structure are critical to enhancing the comprehensive thermo-hydraulic behavior of shell-and-tube heat exchangers (STHX). In the study, Solidworks software was used to establish three-dimensional mesh models of STHX equipped with the segmental baffle and the continuous helical baffle, respectively. ANSYS software was adopted to study the effects of the baffle type and the baffle geometric parameters on the thermo-hydraulic characteristic of STHXs using the pressure drop of the shell side, the coefficient of heat transfer and isobaric JFP factor as the evaluation characteristics. For segmental baffles, better thermo-hydraulic performance could be obtained with a baffle spacing of 200 mm and a gap height of 0.4 D. For helical baffles, an optimized thermo-hydraulic performance could be obtained with a baffle pitch of 150 mm. By comparing the comprehensive thermo-hydraulic performances of STHXs equipped with two different baffles, it could be concluded that the isobaric JFP factor of STHX equipped with the helical baffle was 1.18 times that of STHX equipped with the segmental baffle under the different suitable flow rate.