CFD analysis of heat transfer in a helical coil heat exchanger using fluent

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the CFD analysis of flow of fluid through a helical coil heat exchanger. Also on the enhancement in convective heat transfer in between the fluid and the surrounding surface in these helical coils which has been a major topic of study as reported by many researchers. As helical coil have compact size and higher heat transfer coefficient they are widely used in industrial applications such as power generation, nuclear industry, process plant, refrigeration, food industry, etc. In this study, an attempt has been made to study the parallel flow and counter flow of inner hot fluid flow and outer cold fluid flow, which are separated by copper surface in a helical coil heat exchanger. The temperature contours, velocity vectors, total pressure contours, total heat dissipation rate from the wall of the tube were calculated and plotted using ANSYS 13.0. Copper was used as the base metal for the inner and outer pipe and the fluid was taken as hot water for inner flow and cold water for outer flow.