Numerical and experimental investigations of heat transfer performance of rectangular coil heat exchangers

Both numerical and experimental investigations were conducted to understand convective heat transfer from a single round pipe coiled in rectangular pattern. The studied heat exchangers are composed with inner and outer coils so that the exterior flow is very similar to flow within tube-bundles. The inner and outer coils of the heat exchangers are in turn composed of bends and straight portions. Calculations and experiments were done for two cases with different outside flow arrangements. The results showed the effects of geometric arrangement with better heat transfer for the case 1 of staggered arrangement due mainly to its more tortuous flow characteristics and better mixing of the exterior fluid. The numerical and experimental results qualitatively agree well with each other. The numerical and experimental results showed that coiling a pipe so that an exterior fluid flows over or in tube bundle can help to induce the turbulence without increasing the velocity.