Experimental Investigation on Triple Concentric Tube Heat Exchanger with Helical Baffles

Abstract

A heat exchanger is a device used to transfer thermal energy between two or more liquids, between a solid surface and a liquid, or between solid particles and a liquid at different temperatures and in thermal contact where shell and tube heat exchangers contain a large number of tubes packed in a jacket whose axes are parallel to those of the shell. Heat transfer occurs when one fluid flows into the pipes while the other flows out of the pipes through the jacket. In industry, three-tube heat exchanger tubes are used as condensers, evaporators, sub cooler, heat recovery heat exchangers, etc. The three concentric tube heat exchanger is a constructively modified version of the double concentric tube heat exchanger as an intermediate tube adds some advantages over the double tube heat exchangers in that it is larger tube surface area heat transfer per unit of length.  In the present study, the triple tube heat exchanger is further modified by inserting helical baffle over the surface of one of the tubes and observed turbulence flow which may lead to high heat transfer rates between the fluids of heat exchanger. Further, the Reynolds number, Nusselt number, friction factor of the flow at different mass flow rates of the hot fluid while keeping a constant mass flow rate of cold and normal temperature fluids were calculated. It was found that as the mass flow rate of the fluid increases the Reynolds number increases, the turbulence in the flow will increase which will cause the intermixing of the fluid, higher the rate of intermixing, more will be the heat transfer of the system.