CFD Analysis of the Effect of Mass Flow Rate in a Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger Design

Abstract

Heat exchangers are often found in the chemical process industry, but of all types of heat exchangers, the Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger (STHE) are the most used. The design of shell and tube heat exchangers are continually evolving because of it reduce production costs. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was employed using SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation version 2022 to model the effect of operating parameter such as the mass flow rate on the pressure drop, heat transfer coefficient and the turbulence intensity. The turbulence model adopted for the simulation was the k–ɛ turbulence model incorporating the boundary conditions. Three conditions were studied increasing both shell and tube side mass flow rate, maintaining either the shell or tube constant and then varying the other. The results obtained showed that an increase in mass flow rate have tremendous effect on the pressure drop, heat transfer and turbulence intensity.

Country : Nigeria

1 Oku Ekpenyong Nyong2 Celestine Ebieto3 Francis Jeremiah Okara4 Eward Asu Obi5 Bassey Ekpo Ene

  1. Thermo-fluid, Combustion, and Energy System Research Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Cross River State, Calabar, Nigeria
  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Port Harcourt, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
  3. Thermo-fluid, Combustion, and Energy System Research Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Cross River State, Calabar, Nigeria
  4. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Calabar, Calabar, Nigeria
  5. Thermo-fluid, Combustion, and Energy System Research Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Cross River State, Calabar, Nigeria

IRJIET, Volume 8, Issue 8, August 2024 pp. 215-220

doi.org/10.47001/IRJIET/2024.808024

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