Hydro-thermal shell-side performance evaluation of a shell and tube heat exchanger under different baffle arrangement and orientation

In the present study, a three-dimensional numerical simulation of turbulent fluid flow and heat transfer in the shell side of a shell and tube heat exchanger (STHE) has been investigated. Two primordial parameters are tested: baffles spacing of 106.6, 80 and 64 mm and six baffles orientation angles of 45 degrees, 60 degrees, 90 degrees, 120 degrees, 150 degrees and 180 degrees. The investigations are performed with the CFD COMSOI, Multiphysics 5.1 software using the finite elements method, for Reynolds number ranging from 3000 to 10 000. Some numerical results are validated with available experimental data and an adequate agreement is found. The numerical results show the important role of the studied parameters in the shell side thermal performance enhancement, where the case of baffle orientation angle of 180 degrees, at 64 mm of baffle spacing is the best design that assures mixing flow, giving thus a highest value of thermal performance factor of 3.55 compared with STHE without baffles. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.