ANALYSIS OF A CONDENSER IN A THERMAL POWER PLANT FOR POSSIBLE AUGMENTATION IN ITS HEAT TRANSFER PERFORMANCE

A heat exchanger is a complex device that provides the transfer of thermal energy between two or more fluids, which are at different temperatures and are in thermal contact with each other. Heat exchangers are used either individually or as components of a large thermal system, in a wide variety of commercial, industrial and household applications, e.g. power generation, refrigeration, ventilating and air-conditioning systems, process, manufacturing, aerospace industries, electronic chip cooling as well as in environmental engineering. The improvements in the performance of the heat exchangers have attracted many researchers for a long time as they are of great technical, economical, and not the least, ecological importance. Performance improvement becomes essential particularly in heat exchangers with gases because the thermal resistance of gases can be 10 to 50 times as large as that of liquids which requires large heat transfer surface area per unit volume on gas side. The traditional methods of reducing the air-side thermal resistance are by increasing the surface area of the heat exchanger, or by reducing the thermal boundary layer thickness on the surface of the heat exchanger. Increasing the surface area is effective but it results in the increase in material cost and increase in mass of the heat exchanger.