Numerical Study of Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger Using C.F.D

Abstract

In the present day due to its suitability to high pressure application, the shell and tube heat exchanger has found its profound use in various areas like oil refinery and chemical industries.The present work represents the process of simulating the heat exchanger by drawing the geometry of a shell and tube heat exchanger and meshing the geometry with the help of ANSYS 18.0 software. Here in this work in order to design a shell and tube heat exchanger with helical baffles, the flow field and the temperature field inside the shell of the heat exchanger is studied with the help of ANSYS 18.0 software. The shell has a length of 600mm and diameter 90mm and it contains 7 tubes which are held by a helical baffle whose helix ngle is varied between 00 and 200.By doing the simulation, the variation of pressure is shown for various helix angles and flow rates. Because of the helical structure of the baffles, the fluid inside the shell undergoes a helix type motion. This results in a significant increase in heat transfer coefficients per unit drop of pressure inside the shell.