Influence of uniformity of shell-side flow on heat transfer performance in a shell-and-tube heat exchanger

Abstract

Thermal fluid characteristics of shell-and-tube heatexchanger(STHE) are widely evaluated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Considering the influence of the internal flow distribution on the heat exchanger performance is an important problem . The heat exchanger used in this study is an actual STHE operating in a waste incineration plant for recovering an energy from its exhaust gas. The velocity and temperature distributions in the STHE were obtained by the method of CFD applying a coupled analysis of momentum and energy considering compressibility. A uniformity index (UI) was introduced to indicate the flow condition for evaluating the effect of flow on heat performance. The results show that heat performance and UI value are highly correlated. The results also indicate that the evaluation based on UI is effective in improving heat performance, and case study toward downsizing were examined.