Experimental Analysis to Enhance the Performance of Shell and Tube Exchanger With Ribs

Mechanical Department, Ideal Institute of Technology, Kakinada.

Abstract

Heat transfer has always been a significantly interesting topic with an eye towards developing highly efficient, inexpensive & light weight Heat Exchangers. This project is about enhancement of heat transfer through ribs. Ribs are an efficient & economic tool in heat transfer enhancement which can be used as an obstruction to fluid flow in order to promote turbulence, which would result in comparative increase in the amount of fluid particles coming in contact to the surface and also enhances the overall heat transfer coefficient by disturbing the fluid flow that would break thermal & viscous boundary layers. As a consequence of this, there will be a significant improvement in the Effectiveness of a Heat exchanger. In this study, a Shell & tube heat exchanger is designed, fabricated and also analyzed, where numerous tests are carried out with varying the number of Ribs utilized in the heat exchanger, in order to obtain a substantial increase in: i) Effectiveness ii) Overall Heat transfer coefficient.