Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchanger
Research Title: Numerical Investigation of Conventional Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchanger with Segmental Baffles.
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Supervisor: Dr. Sumon Saha, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
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Goal: A conventional shell and tube heat exchanger with segmental baffles (SG-STHX) is designed to investigate numerically the overall heat transfer rate, mass flow rate, overall heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop by means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses.
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Summary:
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The flow and temperature distributions inside the conventional shell and tube heat exchanger with segmental baffles are resolved using the finite element method(FEM).
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Some modifications in design parameters, in this present study, baffle spacing, baffle cut and tube layout pattern, are adopted in the model to get a comparative analysis of the effects of those modifications on the performance of the shell and tube heat exchanger. The shell side flow is considered to show the comparative analysis and the shell side inlet velocity is varied from 1 m/s to 3 m/s, keeping the tube side velocity constant.
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Overall heat transfer rate, overall heat transfer coefficient, pressure drop are plotted against the mass flow rate to get a clear view of the modifications done on the conventional model. It is found that the heat transfer rate, as well as the heat transfer coefficient increases but the pressure drop, is very much higher than the conventional model.
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All results are interpreted on the basis of streamline distribution, temperature distribution, pressure distribution across the length of both heat exchanger models.
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The heat exchanger is designed in Solidworks, the simulations are done using COMSOL Multiphysics 5.1, commercial CFD simulation software, and the post-processing are done using Tecplot.
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