Effect of Surface Roughness and Micro-Grooves on Condensed Water Removal in Latent Heat Recovery Heat Exchanger

Abstract

Hot-water supply has high percentage of energy consumption in Japanese civilian sector. Gas water heaters are used in most cases. Therefore, improvement in thermal efficiency of a gas water heater is an important issue for energy saving. In order to improve thermal efficiency of a gas water heater, an additional heat exchanger is required for latent heat recovery from exhaust humid combustion. The purpose of this study is to develop a compact latent heat recovery heat exchanger with a simple configuration. It is necessary for compactness to reduce the gap between the heat transfer tubes. However, the narrow gap will cause stagnation of condensed water. In order to remove the condensed water from horizontal tube bank, three kinds of tubes with different surface treatments, polished tubes, unpolished tube, and smooth tube with circular micro-grooves, were examined. As the result, condensed water was easily removed by the groove with the 0.7mm depth, to avoid the formation of water bridges between tubes. The effect could lead to no deterioration in the heat transfer performance by decreasing the tube clearance to 1.0mm.