CFD ANALYSIS OF A SINGLE SHELL AND SINGLE TUBE HEAT EXCHANGER AND DETERMINING THE EFFECT OF BAFFLE ANGLE ON HEAT TRANSFER

The energy present in the exit stream of many energy conversion devices such as I.C engine gas turbine etc. goes as waste, if not utilized properly. The present work has been carried out with a view to predicting the performance of a shell and tube heat exchanger. The performance of the heat exchanger has been evaluated by using the CFD package Fluent for different baff le angles. An attempt has been made to calculate the performance of the heat exchanger by varying the baffle angles and the results obtained have been compared. The baffles inclination dependencies of the heat transfer coefficient and the pressure drop are investigated by numerically modelling a small heat exchanger. The flow and temperature fields inside the shell are resolved using a commercial CFD software tool ANSYS FLUENT In this present work, attempts were made to investigate the impacts of various b affle inclination angles on fluid flow and the heat transfer characteristics of a shell - and - tube heat exchanger for three different baffles inclination angles namely 0°, 45° and - 45°. The simulation results for shell and tube heat exchangers, one with segm ental baffles perpendicular to fluid flow and two with segmental baffles inclined to the direction of fluid flow are compared for their performance. The results are observed to be sensitive to the baffle angles. The steady state heat transfer is found to b e more in the case of 45 degrees as compared to the - 45 degrees case.