A blade-shaped turbulator interrupts the laminar boundary layer and promotes fluid flow turbulence in heat exchangers to improve thermal performance. Increased turbulence boosts heat transfer coefficient and heat exchanger efficiency. HVAC systems, automobile radiators, and power plant heat exchangers use blade-shaped turbulators for their more uniform temperature distribution and faster heat transfer. In our latest journey, we aim to simulate a shell and tube heat exchanger relying on performance improvement by installing blade-shaped turbulators inside the tubes. As always, there is a reference paper as a guide. It is entitled “ Numerical investigation on double tube-pass shell-and-tube heat exchangers with different baffle configurations” published in Applied Thermal Engineering journal.

Simulation Process

The complex geometry consists of blade-shaped turbulators inside tubes and a shell equipped with baffle-cuts, designed using Design Modeler software. Next, a tetrahedron mesh grid containing 6500644 cells is generated. In our previous studies, we investigated the effect of using baffle-cuts to enhance heat transfer inside the shell. This time, a new concept called shape-blade turbulators is added to seek the difference it makes. The hot and cold water inside the shell and tube has 293 and 353K, respectively. The steel material applied on tubes can hasten the heat transmission.

Post-processing

We targeted the study of the effect of using blade-shaped turbulators. It is best to make a comparison between the case without the implementation of blade-shaped turbulators and the clean tubes. Look at the contour below. It displays the temperature distribution in both cases and in both regions. The inlet temperature for both cases is 293K, However, the blade-shape tubulators could remarkably increase turbulence, followed by heat transfer improvement. To put it into values, the outlet temperature shows 314.73K and 318.15K for clean tubes and the equipped case, respectively.