A Review on Comparative Performance of Shell-and-tube Heat Exchangers with Various Design Configurations

Abstract

Widely known that, heat exchanger is a device that is being used to transfer thermal energy (enthalpy) between two or more fluids, between a solid surface and a fluid, or between solid particulates and a fluid, at different temperatures and in thermal contact. The most common heat transfer devices are concentric tube (double pipe), shell and tube and, plate heat exchanger. Nowadays, Shell and tube heat exchangers were used extensively in most industries as petrochemicals, oil and refineries. According to previous survey, almost 45% of heat exchangers utilized are shell and tube heat exchangers due to its highpressure application it is more suitable in the field of oil & petrochemical application. Thus, the following study presented shell and tube type only. Due to complexity of studying heat exchangers experimentally, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) used to simulate the effect of local surface heat transfer coefficients on the surfaces by aid of computer numerical calculation and graphical display. In addition, analysis of the physical phenomena involved in fluid flow and heat conduction would be presented in the following research paper with Comparative designs for shell and tube heat exchangers. The paper considered a review for the design of a shell and tube heat exchanger. A variety of heat exchangers are used in industry and in their products. The objective of this paper is to describe most of these heat exchangers in some detail using classification schemes and the basic design methods for two fluid heat exchangers. The design techniques of recuperators and regenerators. Therein, popular analytical techniques such as log mean temperature difference (LMTD) and effectiveness-number of transfer units (ε-NTU) were considered in the analysis. In the case considered herein, both LMTD and ε-NTU techniques yield the same exact results. Keywords-Heat Exchanger; Shell and tube heat Exchanger; parallel flow; counter flow; single pass shell and tube.