Experimental study of a shell and tube heat exchanger for performance enhancement

Enhancing the heat transfer rate is an important factor in a heat exchanger. There are various heat losses because of convection, conduction and radiation from the fluid to the atmosphere or to the construction material which reduces the performance of a heat exchanger. This paper focuses on developing a model for energy balance accounting the various energy losses based on experimental results. The effect of various parameters like mass flow rate, inlet temperature on the overall heat transfer rate is studied. Based on the results obtained from the model developed parameters are optimized for better performance.