Heat Transfer Characteristics and Performance of a Spirally Coiled Heat Exchanger under Sensible Cooling Conditions

Abstract

In the present study, new experimental data on the heat transfer characteristics and the performance of a spirally coiled heat exchanger under sensible cooling conditions is presented. The spiral-coil heat exchanger consists of a steel shell and a spirally coiled tube unit. The spiral-coil unit consists of six layers of concentric spirally coiled tubes. Each tube is fabricated by bending a 9.27mm diameter straight copper tube into a spiral-coil of five turns. The innermost and outermost diameters of each spiral-coil are 67.7 and 227.6mm, respectively. Air and water are used as working fluids in shell side and tube side, respectively. A mathematical model based on the conservation of energy is developed to determine the heat transfer characteristics. There is a reasonable agreement between the results obtained from the experiment and those obtained from the model and a good agreement for the high air mass flow rate region. The results obtained from the parametric study are also discussed.