Optimization research of sextant fan baffle curvature radius in shell and tube heat exchanger

Abstract

For a high shell side pressure drop of the conventional segmental baffles in shell and tube heat exchanger, a novel sextant fan baffle was put forward. To research the influence of baffle curvature radius of the sextant fan baffled shell and tube heat exchanger (SFTHX) on the shell side pressure drop, the heat transfer coefficient and the comprehensive heat transfer performance, six different curvature radius baffles were numerically simulated and experimental studied in this paper. Based on the numerically simulation results, under the same inlet flow conditions, a better comprehensive heat transfer performance can be found in SFTHX with the baffle curvature radius of 1 D, which is higher by 0.84-6.85% more than that of the others. Moreover, the experimental investigation data of SFTHX with baffle curvature radius of 1 D indicates that the numerically simulation can well predict the flow and heat transfer characteristics with the experiment.