Investigation of thermal-hydraulic characteristics in a novel finned tube heat exchanger for flue gas waste heat recovery

A CFD model is established to study the airside heat transfer and flow resistance performance of a novel H-type fin-and-tube tube heat exchangers (HFTHE). The simulation data are consistent with the experimental results. A novel heat exchanger with a varying tube diameter layout is proposed while attempting to maintain ease of processing and acceptable thermal-hydraulic performance. The influences of geometric parameters and Re number on thermal-hydraulic performance are examined, and it can be observed that the transverse tube pitch has the greatest impact on Nu and Eu numbers. The results show that the overall performance of the novel HFTHE is obviously superior to that of a typical double HFTHE within the studied Re number range (6833-20500). Nu number is increased by 4.3-13.6% and Eu number is decreased by 12.5-21.8%. The multiple regression method is adopted to fit the correlation formulas of Nu and Eu numbers, and the mean deviations are 3.43% and 2.39% respectively.

Automated summary

A CFD model was established to study the airside heat transfer and flow resistance performance of a novel H-type fin-and-tube tube heat exchanger (HFTHE), with results showing its superiority over a typical double HFTHE. The influences of geometric parameters and Re number on performance were explored, and correlation formulas were fitted using the multiple regression method.