ANALYSIS OF HELICAL BAFFLE HEAT EXCHANGER FOR OPTIMUM HELIX ANGLE THROUGH NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS

Heat exchangers are very important heat & mass exchange apparatus in many industries like electric power generation, chemical industries, oil refining, etc. The most common heat exchangers used are shell-&-tube heat exchangers (STHXs). Among different kinds of baffles used in STHX, segmental baffles are most commonly used in conventional STHXs to support tubes & change fluid flow direction. But, conventional heat exchangers with segmental baffles in shell-side have some drawbacks like higher pressure drop. Such drawbacks can be reduced by using helical baffle in the shell side of STHX i.e. helixchanger. In a helixchanger the pressure drop varies with the variation of helix angle, thus the performance. This paper is based on the prediction of optimum helix angle based on the parameters like pressure drop variation and heat transfer coefficient, by carrying out 3D simulation for different helix angles (300 , 350 , 400 , 450 , 500 ). The modeling was done by using CATIA V5 r18 and the analysis was carried out by using cfd tool ANSYS 14.5.