Performance of Pure Crossflow Heat Exchanger in Sensible Heat Transfer Application

Karthik Silaipillayarputhur,Tawfiq Al-Mughanam

doi:10.3390/en14175489

Abstract

All process industries involve the usage of heat exchanger equipment and understanding its performance during the design phase is very essential. The present research work specifies the performance of a pure cross flow heat exchanger in terms of dimensionless factors such as number of transfer units, capacity rate ratio, and heat exchanger effectiveness. Steady state sensible heat transfer was considered in the analysis. The matrix approach that was established in the earlier work was used in the study. The results were depicted in the form of charts, tables, and performance equations. It was observed that indeterminately increasing the number of transfer units past a threshold limit provided very marginal improvement in the performance of a pure cross flow heat exchanger. Likewise, flow pattern in a heat exchanger is usually assumed either as mixed or unmixed. However, due to various operating conditions, partially mixed conditions do exist. This work considers partially mixed conditions in the tube side of the heat exchanger. The correction factor for heat exchanger effectiveness was developed to accommodate partially mixed flow conditions in the pure cross flow heat exchanger.

Highlights

Energies 2021, 14, 5489. https://All process and manufacturing plants have a lot of heat exchanger equipment
The first part deals with expressing the performance of a pure cross flow heat exchanger in terms of dimensionless factors
Sensible heat transfer at steady state conditions were considered for the performance analysis

Summary

Introduction

All process and manufacturing plants have a lot of heat exchanger equipment. Heat exchanger (HX) is an equipment used to transfer heat between two or more fluids, wherein the fluids are separated by a solid wall. Correction factors were developed to describe partially mixed conditions in the tube side of a pure cross flow heat exchanger It must be noted from [13] that a flow rate aberration at the heat exchanger’s inlet creates unsteady output, and the equipment requires a finite time to regain its steady state. In this work, it will be seen whether a partially mixed flow condition in the tube side will impact the steady state performance of the heat exchanger

Governing Equations

Performance Predictions

Conclusions