Numerical Simulation of Heat Losses between a Partition Plate and the Wall of the Head of a Plastic Heat Exchanger

Abstract:

For this research it was considered that the heat exchanger was affected by leakage in the head across the partition plate and the wall between the tube passes. Leakage was a problem in the plastic shell and tube heat exchanger, because it was difficult to seal the partition plate to the head of the exchanger. The material used for manufacturing the heat exchanger was polyvinylidene fluoride, PVDF. In order to predict the amount of flow leaking through the clearances of the tube passes, a numerical simulation was carried out using the computational Fluid Dynamics CFD Fluent Software. To obtain the percentage of the heat loss across the 4 tube passes, different clearance sizes between the partition plate and the wall of the head of the exchanger were analysed. For the smaller clearance size of 0.2 mm the heat transfer coefficient was reduced up to 15%. These results suggest that the flow mass bypassing the head between tube passes affect the results of the heat transfer coefficient and confirm the experimental observation, that its performance was affected by leakage between tube passes. This research served as an extension of the preliminary plastic heat exchanger design.

• Periodical: Defect and Diffusion Forum (Volumes 297-301)
• Pages: 650-655
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/DDF.297-301.650
• Online since: April 2010
• Authors: Rita Aguilar Osorio, Keith Cliffe
• Keywords: Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Heat Exchange, Heat Transfer, Numerical Simulation of Heat Losses

References

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