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Article history: Corrugated plate heat exchangers have larger heat transfer surface area and increased turbulence level
Received 4 September 2009 due to the corrugations. In this study, experimental heat transfer data are obtained for single phase flow
Accepted 19 January 2010 (water-to-water) configurations in a commercial plate heat exchanger for symmetric 30°/30°, 60°/60°,
Available online 22 January 2010
and mixed 30°/60° chevron angle plates. Experiments were carried out for Reynolds number ranging
from 500 to 2500 and Prandtl number from 3.5 to 6.5. Experimental results show significant effect of
Keywords: chevron angle and Reynolds number on the heat transfer coefficient. Based on the experimental data,
Plate heat exchanger
a correlation to estimate Nusselt number as a function of Reynolds number, Prandtl number and chevron
Single phase
Heat transfer
angle has been proposed.
Nusselt number Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Chevron angle
1359-4311/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2010.01.021
T.S. Khan et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 30 (2010) 1058–1065 1059
Nomenclature
Muley and Manglik [19] considered two symmetric 30°/30° and transfer correlations available in literature and heat transfer corre-
60°/60° and a mixed chevron 30°/60° configurations in their single lation developed in the present study are tabulated in Table 1.
phase experimental investigations on heat transfer and isothermal It should be noted that most of the previous studies provide
frictional pressure drop. Both Nusselt number and friction factor only partial details on test conditions and plate geometry. The heat
were reported to increase with increasing chevron angle, however, transfer enhancement characteristics of plate heat exchangers
frictional factor was reported to increase more rapidly as compared could be fully utilized in the industrial applications only if accurate
to the Nusselt number. Based on the experimental data they have correlations are available for Nusselt number and frictional pres-
reported correlations for heat transfer and pressure drop. Warn- sure drop with all the necessary details. However, lack of data is
akulasuriya and Worek [20] investigated heat transfer and pres- still a barrier in the use of plate heat exchangers in industry. Pri-
sure drop of a viscous absorbent salt solution in a commercial mary aim of present work is to investigate thermal performance
plate heat exchanger. Overall heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt of a plate heat exchanger. This investigation is focused on develop-
number are reported to increase with Reynolds number while ing a single phase heat transfer correlation for a commercially
friction factor decreased. Based on the experimental data, correla- available plate heat exchanger with different chevron angles, and
tions for Nusselt number and friction factor were proposed. corrugation depths in two symmetric and a mixed plate configura-
Tovazhnyanski et al. [21] investigated thermo-hydraulic character- tion. The proposed correlation also includes varying viscosity ef-
istics of plate heat exchanger with different chevron angle plates. fects. In the present study, each commercially available plate
Both heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop of the fluid were configuration in addition to having a different chevron angle also
reported to increase with an increase in the chevron angle. Ayub has different corrugation depth, b. Past studies either did not men-
[22] presented a detailed review of available single phase correla- tion corrugation depth or used the same b and changed chevron
tions on plate heat exchangers. Some of the single phase heat angle only.
Table 1
Experimental parameters of present study and some previously reported studies.
Okada et al. [12] 30, 45, 60, 75 1.147, 1.294, 4.55 8.0 400–15,000 0:66 0:4
Nu ¼ 0:1528Re Pr ; b ¼ 30
1.412 Nu ¼ 0:2414Re0:64 Pr0:4 ; b ¼ 45
0:65
Nu ¼ 0:3174Re Pr0:4 ; b ¼ 60
Nu ¼ 0:4632Re0:62 Pr0:4 ; b ¼ 75
Talik et al. [23,24] 60 1.22 1.55 4.65 1450–11,460, 2.5–5.0, 70– Nu ¼ 0:248Re0:7 Pr0:4
10–720 450 Nu ¼ 0:2Re0:75 Pr0:4
Focke et al. [14] 0, 30, 45, 60, 80, 1.464 2.0 10.0 100–10,000 Nu ¼ CRem Pr0:50
90
Thonon [28] 30, 45, 60, 75 50–15,000 Nu ¼ CRem Pr3
1
2. Experimentation Table 2
Important geometric characteristics of the chevron plate.
Table 3 was dependent on the heat flux required for a specific experiment.
Geometric characteristics of chevron plates tested in the present study. One of the 2 kW heaters was connected to the hot water inlet RTD
Plate width, Lw (mm) 185 through an on/off switch and a digital thermostat which was capa-
Vertical distance between centers of ports, Lv (mm) 565 ble of controlling the temperature within ±0.1 °C. The hot water in-
Port diameter, Dp (mm) 43 let temperature, set using a thermostat, was pre-selected based on
Horizontal distance between centers of ports, Lh (mm) 125
the desired value of Prandtl number. The hot water flow rate was
Corrugation depth or mean channel spacing, b (mm) 2.2, 2.9 and 3.6a
Plate thickness, t (mm) 0.5 adjusted by varying the speed of the pump through the power in-
Effective area of plate, A (m2) 0.095 verter. The cold water flow rate was adjusted to desired settings by
Corrugation pitch, Pc (mm) 13.25 and 6.25b the flow control valve. The experiments were conducted in a ma-
Surface enlargement factor, u 1.117 trix of varying Reynolds number at a fixed Prandtl number. Five
a
For b = 60°/60°, 30°/60° and 30°/30° plate configurations, respectively. different Reynolds numbers were used for each Prandtl number
b
For b = 30° and 60° plates, respectively. setting. The flow rates of both fluid streams were set in such a
way that the Reynolds number was same. Effect of neglecting the
difference in hot and cold side Prandtl number on the Nusselt
differential pressure transmitters were attached to dual process in- number correlation was less than 5%.
put meters for the data display. This indicator is capable of accept-
ing two inputs and is manufactured by Red Lion of USA. The
pressure and temperature data were recorded in a personal com-
puter through the data logger. Calibration of the instruments was
done using standard procedures. The temperature measurements,
which were to be used in calculation of heat transfer coefficients,
were crucial. All RTDs were periodically calibrated against a cali-
brated RTD in a constant temperature water bath.
Sufficient time was given to the system to achieve steady state hDh
Nu ¼ ð8Þ
condition. The flow rates, temperatures at all inlets and exits of the k
plate heat exchanger and energy balance were monitored. The goal This process was repeated for a range of Reynolds number and a
of this experimentation was to determine the convection heat regression analysis was then conducted to develop a Nusselt num-
transfer coefficient. This was possible by assuming the heat trans- ber correlation.
fer coefficient to be same on both sides. This was ensured to a cer-
tain extent by keeping the Reynolds numbers same on both sides of
2.6. Experimental uncertainty
the heat exchanger. The mathematical calculation procedure is fur-
ther explained in the following data reduction section.
An experimental error analysis was performed according to the
procedure outlined by Moffat [27]. After accounting for errors in
2.5. Data reduction the heating and cooling water data measurements, the maximum
errors in the primary measurements of mass flow rate and temper-
The primary measurements were fluid flow rates, pressure and ature were found to be ±4% and ±2.5%, respectively. Based on these
temperature at inlet and exit of the plate heat exchanger for both errors, an uncertainty of ±8% exists in calculated values of Nu.
fluids. The International Association for the properties of water
and steam (IAPWS) software version 95 for water was used to
determine the fluid properties at bulk mean temperature, which 3. Results and discussions
is given by:
Data were obtained for single phase flow (water to water) for
T c;i þT c;o symmetric 30°/30°, 60°/60°, and mixed 30°/60° chevron angle
T c;avg ¼ 2
ð1Þ plates. The mixed configuration was approximated by b = 45°.
T h;i þT h;o
T h;avg ¼ 2
Experiment was carried out for Reynolds number ranging from
500 to 2500 and Prandtl number from 3.5 to 6.5. In addition to
where subscripts ‘‘c” and ‘‘h” indicate cold and hot water respec- Re and Pr, Nu also depends on the plate characteristics. Effect of
tively as shown by streams 1 and 2 in Fig. 3. Heat transfer coeffi- Re on Nu for three chevron angle configurations is shown in
cient was determined by the overall heat transfer coefficient, U, as Fig. 4. The trend suggests that Nu increases with chevron angle
follows: and increases linearly with Re.
The present corrugated plate data are significantly higher than
1 1 1 t those of a flat plate heat exchanger [26]. The heat transfer
¼ þ þ ð2Þ
U hc hh k enhancement could be attributed to increased effective area and
As mentioned above, Reynolds number was kept the same on swirl flow generated by chevron corrugated channels. This in-
both sides of the plate during experiment such that the heat trans- creased effective area is represented by area enlargement factor,
fer coefficient both sides is assumed to be same i.e., hc = hh = h; u. The area enlargement factor for the plates used in this study is
therefore, Eq. (2) can be written as: 1.117, as provided by the manufacturer. At a given Re, the Nu in-
creases four to nine times compared to flat plate at various chevron
1 1 1 t angles. This suggests that enhanced heat transfer of a corrugated
¼ ð3Þ
h 2 U k plate heat exchanger is primarily attributed to the greater turbu-
lence level rather than surface area enlargement. Such result is in
where the overall heat transfer coefficient, U, is determined as agreement with previous studies reported by Heavner et al. [18]
follows: and Muley and Manglik [19].
Q avg The experimental Nusselt number data of the present investiga-
U¼ ð4Þ tion is also compared with a number of reported studies. Fig. 5
ADT LMTD
shows comparison of present data with some correlations reported
where ‘‘A” is the effective heat transfer surface area and DTLMTD is in the literature. In the comparison only extreme estimated values,
the log-mean temperature difference for counter flow arrangement, using Nu correlations (Chisholm and Wanniarachchi [17], on
given by:
8 9
<ðT T Þ ðT T Þ=
h;i c;o h;o c;i
DT LMTD ¼ h i ð5Þ
: ðT T Þ
ln h;i c;o ;
ðT h;o T c;i Þ
The heat transfer rates from the hot and cold fluids can be
determined by energy balance as shown below:
_ h cp;h DT h
Qh ¼ m ð6Þ
_ c cp;c DT c
Qc ¼ m ð7Þ
Acknowledgements
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