AN INVESTIGATION ON THERMO-HYDRAULIC PERFORMANCE OF SHELL AND TUBE HEAT EXCHANGER WITH RECYCLES

Heat transfer augmentation in heat exchangers has been a key research area in recent times. Over the years, many methods were proposed for heat transfer enhancement such as providing fins, ribs, and twisted tape inserts, etc. In addition to the above-mentioned techniques, utilization of recycles was proposed by few authors and it was demonstrated that this method could effectively increase the heat transfer rate. Several theoretical research were conducted to investigate the effect of recycles on heat transfer rate. However, most of these works are limited to parallel flow heat exchangers and very few works are related to cross-flow heat exchangers. This method of augmentation of heat transfer can be extended to shell and tube heat exchangers as these kinds of heat exchangers are widely used in industries. There is a need to establish a theoretical model to study the thermo-hydraulic performance of shell and tube heat exchanger with recycling. The present work is aimed at developing a theoretical model and hence to do the parametric study on the performance of shell and tube heat exchanger with recycles.