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Available online 19 March 2010 In the present study an experimental investigation of the mixed convection heat transfer in a coil-in-shell
heat exchanger is reported for various Reynolds and Rayleigh numbers, various tube-to-coil diameter ratios
Keywords: and dimensionless coil pitch. The purpose of this article is to assess the inuence of the tube diameter, coil
Heat exchanger pitch, shell-side and tube-side mass ow rate over the performance coefcient and modied effectiveness of
Helical coil vertical helical coiled tube heat exchangers. The calculations have been performed for the steady-state and
Forced convection
the experiments were conducted for both laminar and turbulent ow inside coil. It was found that the mass
Heat transfer
ow rate of tube-side to shell-side ratio was effective on the axial temperature proles of heat exchanger.
The results also indicate that the NTU relation of the mixed convection heat exchangers was the same as
that of a pure counter-ow heat exchanger.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Thermal performance and pressure drop of the helical coil with
and without ns of heat exchanger were investigated by Naphon [3].
Reports on extensive numerical and experimental investigations Two different coil diameters with 9.5 mm diameter copper tube
are available to be used for both laminar and turbulent ow in straight having thirteen turns were used. Hot and cold water were used as
tubes. However, ow through or over coiled pipes with curvature and working uid in the range between 0.10 and 0.22 kg/s and between
torsion is still under exploration. Heat exchangers are vastly used in 0.02 and 0.12 kg/s, respectively. They have shown that with increasing
many industrial processes. Use of helical coils adds efciency to the hot water mass ow rate friction factor decreased.
heat exchanger performance. Shell-and-coil heat exchangers have An extra parameter has been introduced by Kharat et al. [4] to
been used mainly in solar domestic hot water (SDHW) systems cover coil gap in multi helical coils in heat exchangers. A wide range of
because of their high heat transfer and smaller space requirement, Reynolds numbers from 20,000 to 150,000 has been analyzed. They
their use in heat recovery systems for space heating also has been have also used Fluent 6.3.26 to compare data. Various helical coils
reported [1]. Therefore, it is worthy to study heat transfer, pressure made of 12.5 mm ID tube with various coil diameters ranging from 92
drop and thermal performance of the shell side of helical or spiral to 1282 mm to determine friction factors have been investigated by
coil used in heat exchangers. In spite of numerical and experimental Srinivasan et al. [1]. Four different coil pitches of 2.5, 3.3, 6.6 and 13.2
studies which have been carried out in relation to tube-side heat tube diameters were tested and graphs of friction factors with respect
transfer coefcient, there are not many investigations on the shell-side to the Dean number were produced. All the graphs showed break-
mixed convection heat transfer coefcient of shell-and-coil heat points which were interpreted as the critical Reynolds number value
exchangers. so that equation was found to describe this critical value for different
The heat transfer and performance of a spirally coiled, nned-tube, tube diameter to shell diameter ratio.
in a steel shell heat exchanger was investigated by Wongwises et al. Tube in tube helical coil heat exchanger has been investigated
[2]. The spiral coil consists of a tube with 9.6 mm in diameter, having to study uid ow and heat transfer under turbulent condition by
four turns and six layers. Air and water were used for shell side and Mandal and Nigam [5]. Hot air and cold water were used in inner tube
tube side, respectively. They have illustrated that with increasing mass and outer tube as working uid. Moreover, the Reynolds number in
ow rate in tube side the effectiveness of the heat exchanger decreased inner tube for air was ranged from 14,000 to 86,000. A CFD work
and had a slight increase with increasing water mass ow rate. investigation has been done to cover the experimental data. Rogres
and Mayhew [6] concentrated their attention on heat transfer and
pressure loss in helically coiled tubes with turbulent ow having mean
Communicated by W.J. Minkowycz.
diameters of 10.2, 12.5 and 190 mm, made of 9.45 mm ID copper tubes
Corresponding author. heated by steam at slightly above atmospheric pressure. The heat
E-mail address: mirgolbabaei@gmail.com (H. Mirgolbabaei). transfer data resulted in the empirical equation for the Reynolds
0735-1933/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.icheatmasstransfer.2010.02.001
776 N. Ghorbani et al. / International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer 37 (2010) 775781
Fig. 1. a) Apparatus for heat exchanger experiments, b) Schematic diagram of a shell-and-coil mixed convection heat exchanger.
with circular cross-section by Conte et al. [17]. The focus of their study 2. Experimental apparatus and test section
was concentrated on exploring the convective heat transfer from conical
and helical coils with comparative studies. The same numerical Fig. 1 is a picture of the apparatus arranged for heat exchanger
investigation method was applied to two differentially coiled pipes experiments. The experimental procedure is the same as Ghorbani et al
(helical and conical) and for different Reynolds numbers corresponding [18]. Hot water was pumped to the tank, passing through six electric
to ve cases of exterior ow arrangement. The results showed better
heat transfer performance for cases of conical coils whereas much ow
Table 1
turbulence was observed due to an effective ow arrangement.
Geometrical characteristics of the heat exchanger.
Although there are many works done in tube-side of helical coiled
tube heat exchangers also on the natural convection on shell-side, No. Dt,o Dt,i Dc Ds,i Ds,o H p N
(mm) (mm) (mm) (mm) (mm) (mm) (mm)
there are not many investigations on forced and mixed convection
considering the both side of the heat exchanger. The present study 1 9.47 7.77 125.71 88.9 157 383 16.47 23.25
covers both laminar and turbulent ow regimes inside the coiled tube 2 12.59 10.82 128.31 88.9 157 383 16.47 23.25
3 12.59 10.82 128.31 88.9 157 383 23.57 16.25
depending on different mass ow rates.
778 N. Ghorbani et al. / International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer 37 (2010) 775781
Table 2
Experimental uncertainties of important parameters.
heaters and a valve that was installed at the inlet of the heat exchanger
to control the ow rate. Cold water in the shell side was taken from
urban water supply. The temperature of the inlet water of coiled tube to
the heat exchanger was controlled by a thermostat. Four different
constant temperatures of 50, 60, 70, and 80 C were considered for inlet Fig. 4. Temperature distribution for coil # 4.
mass ow rate of coil. These temperatures are in accord with the outlet
temperature of a at plate solar collector. The temperature of shell-side temperature data and to perform calculations. The data acquisition
inlet was equal to the temperature of tap water. The ow rate was system scanned and stored data every 5 s and the measured values
measured using a calibrated measuring cylinder and a stopwatch were averaged over a period of 4 min. As with report of every experi-
positioned at the outlet of heat exchanger. The mean mass ow rates of mental research, the analysis of the experimental uncertainties in
shell-side and coil-side are 0.024, 0.05, 0.09 and 0.113 kg/s respectively. calculating the results must be given proper attention. The method
These mass ow rates are selected according to the outlet mass ow proposed by Kline and McClintock [19] seems to be widely accepted
rate of a solar collector working in SDHW system [7]. among the authors of technical papers. The uncertainty in calculating
The coil was formed carefully by using 9.52 and 12.5 mm OD the major heat transfer and hydraulic parameters were evaluated based
straight copper tubing. Care was taken to locate the coil into the on the mentioned method. The results are reported in Table 2.
middle of the circular space between inner and outer shells of heat
exchanger. The specication of heat exchanger is shown in Table 1. 3. Results and discussion
Temperatures were measured by four K-type thermocouples placed
at equally distanced locations in order to measure the coil surface and Figs. 24 show typical temperature distributions inside the heat
the uid temperature. Four other thermocouples were located at inlets exchanger for xed inlet conditions(Rm 1 and Th,i = 80 C). In all
and outlets of heat exchanger to measure the temperatures of the hot graphs of the axial temperature prole, the zero value on the abscissa
and cold uids. A data acquisition device made by Advantech model USB corresponds to the bottom of the exchanger whereas the value of one
4718 having a capacity of 8 analog input channels was used to record all indicates the top. The axial temperature prole is very close to linear
temperature measurements. All tests were performed under steady- (R2 = 0.97) for all graphs.
state conditions. A Visual Basic code was written to retrieve and store Figs. 57 show typical temperature distributions inside the heat
exchanger for xed inlet conditions(Rm 0.21 and Th,i = 80C). The
Fig. 3. Temperature distribution for coil #2. Fig. 6. Temperature distribution for coil #2.
N. Ghorbani et al. / International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer 37 (2010) 775781 779
axial temperature prole of the coil surface is far from being linear for capacity. It can be concluded that for such a low shell-side mass ow
those gures. This deviation from a linear prole is inuenced by the rate, the heat exchanger is oversized in terms of the surface area.
mass ow rate ratio. The nonlinearity is such that the proles tend to be Figs. 810 show typical temperature distributions inside the heat
concave up, which means that the coil surface temperature is higher exchanger for xed inlet conditions(Rm 4.7 and Th,i = 80 C). The
than usual at the top and then it drops faster than usual while moving axial temperature prole of the shell-side water is far from being
towards the bottom of the heat exchanger. The value of Rm 1 seems to linear for those gures. In these cases, the proles tend to be concave
be the critical point. For Rm signicantly less than unity the curves down as opposed to the trend in Figs. 57. It can be seen that as the
deviate greatly from being linear whereas the curves are close to a mass ow rate ratio changes, the temperature prole changes from an
straight line for Rm 1. The linear temperature prole means that the initially concave-up prole to concave-down one. In other words the
shell-side heat transfer coefcient is constant along the axis of the heat coil surface is colder than usual at the top part and its temperature
exchanger. There is a notable drop in coil surface temperature. The gradually decreases until it reaches its lowest value at the bottom of
curves suggest that the shell-side heat transfer coefcient is no longer heat exchanger.
constant. Since it is reasonable to assume that the heat ux is uniform, The logarithmic mean temperature difference (LMTD) decreases
the product (hoT) is constant along the coil surface. Therefore a as the mass ow rate ratio increases for each heat ux. This is evident
smaller temperature difference means a higher ho value. The magnitude from Fig. 11 which is typical of the behavior of LMTD. Also it is seen
of ho starts from a low value at the top and gradually increases to that for a xed value of Rm, the effect of increased heat rate is to
its highest value at the bottom of the heat exchanger. Obviously this increase the value of LMTD. Also each individual curve experiences a
situation is not desirable since the hot stream forfeits its heat very attening effect as the mass ow rate ratio increases, especially for
quickly and therefore the heat exchanger does not operate at its full
Fig. 9. Temperature distribution for coil #2. Fig. 12. Modied effectiveness for all test congurations.
780 N. Ghorbani et al. / International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer 37 (2010) 775781
Th;i Tc;o
= 1
Th;i Tc;i
As can be seen in Fig. 12, the slope of the curve falls rapidly as the
value of the corrected mass ow rate increases. For all mass ow rate
ratios less than unity, a slight decrease will result in a considerable Fig. 13. Comparison of effectiveness data with standard heat exchanger congurations.
improvement of heat exchanger effectiveness, while for values larger
than 2 the modied effectiveness remains nearly unchanged. This 0:8 h i
D Dt 0:8 0:4
means that for a certain heat exchanger, increment of tube-side mass Nui = 1 + 3:6 1 t 0:0023Rei Pri 7
Dc Dc
ow rate will always downgrade the effectiveness.
The data can be correlated by a simple power equation. Eq. (2) is
recommended for predicting the effectiveness of heat exchanger in In order to establish the effectivenessNTU relations for the shell-
the range of Rm from 0.33 to 5. and-coil heat exchangers, the data was plotted together with the plots
0:4627 for some standard congurations in Fig. 13. As it could be observed in
m s Fig. 13, the NTU relationship for parallel and counter-ow
= 0:4744 2
m c concentric tube heat exchangers, cross ow with both uids unmixed
and cross ow with the Cmin uid mixed are plotted for the case
The tube diameter has little effect on the modied effectiveness Cr = 0.5 as an average value. In addition, for the sake of comparison
since it does not appear in Eq. (2). This equation indicates that is a the general NTU for all heat exchangers with Cr = 0 has also been
strong function of the mass ow rate ratios. The shell-side water mass presented in the same gure.
ow rate has a favorable effect and tube-side mass ow rate has an From Fig. 13 the effectiveness of the parallel-ow concentric tube
adverse effect on the modied effectiveness of the heat exchanger. heat exchanger is the lowest of all and is far below the values observed
Physically, more shell-side water ow means more heat extracted in current experiments. The case of Cr = 0 would over predict the
from the hot stream and therefore a greater temperature fall in that effectiveness if used for the current case. This case can be attributed to
stream which translates into better effectiveness. On the contrary, the situation where the ow rate of one of the uids is so small that it
more tube-side mass ow rate leads to less temperature fall in the hot can be considered stagnant. If the relationship of the cross-ow type
stream and consequently worsens the effectiveness of the heat heat exchanger with one of the uids mixed is used for current
exchanger. The two mass ow rates, therefore act against each other situation, the data would be under predicted and therefore the
with the same strength. relationship is not suitable. Two cases that can closely predict the data
Using the denition of the modied effectiveness and Eq. (2), one are the cross ow with both uids unmixed and the counter-ow
can easily derive equations for predicting the tube-side and shell-side concentric tube heat exchangers. Among them, the counter-ow
outlet temperature. conguration is closest in reality and also on the graph. In order to
0:4627 double check this observation, Fig. 14 must be considered.
m s
Th;o = Th;i 0:4744 Th;i Tc;i 3
m c
0:5373
cp;c m c
Tc;o = Tc;i + 0:4744 Th;i Tc;i 4
cp;s m s
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exchangers with and without helically crimped ns, International Communica-
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