No 4

Computated Fluid Dynamics applications in various heat exchangers design

This is a literature review that is based on the application of computational fluid dynamics in
the field of heat exchangers. It has been discovered that (CFD) has been employed for the
following areas of study in the various types of heat exchangers, fouling, pressure drop and
fluid flow maldistribution in the design and optimization phase. Different turbulence models
available in general purpose commercial CFD tools i.e standard, realizable and RNG k _ ε
RSM, and SST k _ ε in conjunction with velocity- pressure coupling schemes such as
SIMPLE,SIMPLEC,PISO and etc. have been used to carry out the simulations. The quality of
the solutions gathered from these particular simulations are largely within the acceptable
range therefore proving that CFD is and effective tool for predicting the behaviours and
performance of a wide variety of heat exchangers.

Introduction

Heat exchangers play a key role I the operation of many systems such as power plants,
process industries and heat recovery units. It is inevitable need has necessitated work on
efficient and realizable designs leading towards optimum share in the overall system
performance.

The Log mean Temperature Difference (LMTD) method and the number of heat transfer
units (NTU) method have been used for heat exchanger designs. Though these methods have
some shortcomings associated with them for example iterative in nature and needing a
prototype to implement the design therefore making these methods time consuming as wells
as expensive especially for large scale models, the economic access to powerful
microprocessors has paved way for the evolvement of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
during the design phase.

CFD is a science that can be helpful in the study of fluid flow, heat transfer, chemical
reactions and many more. CFD employs a simple principle, this is by resolving the entire
system in small cells or grids and applying governing equations on these discrete elements to
find numerical solutions regarding pressure distribution, temperature gradients, flow
parameters and the like in a shorter time at a lower cost because of reduced required
experimental work.

CFD and Heat Exchangers

There are many types of heat exchangers, these include plate type heat exchangers, shell and
tube heat exchangers, vertical mantle heat exchangers and micro heat exchanger, there are
many more types of exchangers based on construction.
Fouling

Fouling is the degradation of working fluid due to high temperatures or interaction with the
exchanger walls resulting in unwanted materials accumulated on the walls and hence the
fouling process impedes the function of the system or plant. In extreme cases, frequent
maintenance is required to have a smooth running of the system. This phenomenon is
mostly encountered in the food processing plant. Through the simulation for temperature
profiles of milk inside a plate heat exchanger, it pointed out that weak regions are formed
due to fouling and this is due to the difference in temperatures between the plate and the
working medium. An investigation of the impact of corrugations and their position on
fouling rates for a similar heat exchanger used for the pasteurisation of milk was performed.
From this, an alternate design of the heat exchanger was suggested in order to be able to
use unconventional heat exchangers in the food processing plant.

Pressure drop

Pressure drop always occur because every fluid undergoes some loss in pressure while
flowing in the heat exchanger. This occurs mainly due to the choice of design of core and
the fluid distribution components such as the inlet and outlet ports. This pressure loss is
particularly due to the flow distribution devices affects the heat transfer rate of the
exchanger. A CFD replica on the tubes of a heat exchanger used in closed-wet cooling
towers was performed. The pressure drop depended on the tube configurations and water
to air ratio. The predicted pressure loss was found to be inversely proportional the
transverse pitch but was directly proportional with water to air mass flow rate. The
pressure was found to be maximum at the separation plate of the 2 distinct temperatures
streams in the vertical plane of a cross flow air to air heat exchanger. The cold air pressure
in the tube was found to be upmost at the inlet that decreased gradually due to friction with
the wall of the inner tube.

From Q.W Dong experiments, he considered a rod baffle shell and tube heat exchanger. He
used a periodic flow unit duct to examine the pressure drop. Several experiments were
carried out and it could be concluded that the pressure drop is inversely proportional to the
baffle pitch assuming flow velocity is constant. On the other hand it was seen to increase
with the rise in fluid velocity at constant baffle pitch. And finally It was concluded that, the
periodic duct unit model can define the flow and pressure characteristics more precisely
than other models.

Pedro F Lisboa considered the heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics of the kenics static
mixer which is utilized in industrial processes for the formation of supercritical carbon
dioxide. A CFD simulation was done using FLUENT to analyse the impact of pressure values
on the heat transfer rate. An increasing trend was observed in the pressure drop for a rising
fluid velocity with an aspect ratio. A comparison with ordinary pipe mixer concluded that
the static mixer is three times more efficient than ordinary pipe type mixer.

Thermal analysis

The main purpose of heat exchanger is to enhance the heat transfer between fluids. This
reduces the energy requirements and helps make a process more efficient both in terms of
production and economic. Using the CFD analysis, researchers have approached the thermal
characteristics of heat exchangers from two point of view that is, thermal coefficients and
effect of physical features on heat transfer rate.

Influence on thermal parameters

Basic strategies were performed through the study of parameters like the impact on the
overall heat transfer coefficient of the heat exchanger.

Vikas Kumar considered a cross flow air to air tube type heat exchanger and observed the
relation between heat transfer and the Dean’s number keeping the flow rate constant in the
outer region. An increase in in the heat transfer was observed with a rise in inner Dean’s
number. It was assumed that the heat loss occurred through convection from the top
surface of the exchanger only whereas all radiation losses were neglected in the study. Due
to symmetry in geometrical construction, a section of heat exchanger was considered for
CFD analysis.

Maldistribution

Non Uniformity in fluid flow is one of the main reasons resulting in a poor heat exchanger
performance. This may be because of the improper design of the inlet/outlet port and header
configuration, distributor construction and plate corrugations. The problem has been
approached by many researchers using CFD by applying various turbulence models and
integrating schemes focusing on pressure variation and velocity distribution. For example
Zhe Zhang et al. simulated the inlet configuration to optimize the header design in a plate fin
heat exchanger. The ratio of equivalent diameter was used; the results obtained with the help
of CFD showed that the flow distribution is critical in the y direction. From this, it was able
to establish that a more uniform flow may be established if the ratios were kept equal for the
outlet and inlet equivalent diameters.

Counter Flow in a tube-in-tube helical heat exchanger was simulated by Vimal Kumar et al.
The flow through both the tubes was studied for various known cross-sections through the
control volume finite difference method, it was realized that small axial distances, affect of
secondary flow due to centrifugal force pushes the fluid outward making secondary flow
maximum across walls of the inner tube.
Design Optimization.

CFD has proved an effective tool in the design optimization of heat exchangers by studying
thermal properties.

Through CFD simulation, in 2003 S Knudsen discussed the effect of inlet positions of the
mantle on thermal behavior for a vertical mantle used in solar domestic hot water systems. it
was concluded that it was better if the inlet was located a the top of a high inlet-temperature
to the mantle while for low temp inlet, moving the inlet down yields better performance.

Kwasi Foli et al. stated that the nature of fluid, operating conditions and geometry play a
major role in defining the performance of a micro channel heat exchanger. CFD analysis
together with analytical and multi objective generic algorithms methods respectively to
determine optimum design and the results obtained were compared, The latter was found
more useful as it did not only help find the optimum dimensions but the shape of the
optimum design structure too. Therefore in this case algorithms proved superior.

A borehole heat exchanger using ground water as working media was studied, the objective
was to was to estimate the result, the objective was to estimate the result of convection in the
overall heat transfer. A CFD simulation of the proposed U shaped model was carried out
based on the study of Desai and Littlefield to evaluate the heat transfer rate when induced
convection. These are some of the situations where CFD has been used in design
optimization.

Conclusion

Conventional methods used for the design and development of heat exchangers are largely
tedious and expensive in today’s competitive market. CFD has emerged as a cost effective
alternative and it provides speedy solution to heat exchanger design and optimization.