Abstract

This work deals with a comparative performance study of two different helically coiled heat exchangers with two and three helical coils through a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation for heat transfer characteristics. The helically coiled heat exchangers are typical industrial equipments found in process applications, such as: chemical, food, energy, electronics, environmental, spatial, and cryogenic. Numerical studies were performed with the assistance of a commercial computational fluid dynamics package (ANSYS-CFX v12). Simulations were performed using various temperatures (hot fluid inlet temperature of 25, 30, 35 and 40°C) and the inlet cold fluid temperature is 20°C. Results indicated that the performance of both heat exchangers for the temperature 25°C (hot fluid inlet) was quite similar, but for the temperature 40°C (hot fluid inlet), the heat exchanger with three turns was more efficient than another exchanger (two turns). It was shown that the performance could be increased by increasing the hot fluid inlet temperature with two and three helical coils.

Key words: Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis, heat exchanger, helically coiled performance, number of helically coils.