CFD Investigation of Convective Heat Transfer in Helically Coiled Tube Heat Exchangers

In the present study, thermal performance and convection heat transfer of a helically coiled tube heat exchanger were investigated using CFD technics provided by ANSYS CFX version 12.1. The heat exchanger consisted of shell and a helically coiled tube placed vertically in the shell-side. Water was used as working fluid in both shell-side and tube-side in CFD simulations. The results were validated by experimental data reported by Ghorbani et al. [1,2] with average error of 5-6%.Overall heat transfer coefficient were calculated and plotted in order to investigate the performance of heat exchanger.Heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt numbers were also investigated and correlations were provided for Nusselt for Reynolds numbers in the renge of 5000-15000 and the effect of coil-to-tube ratio were studied by applying Dean number.