Designing Spiral Plate Heat Exchangers to Extend Its Service and Enhance the Thermal and Hydraulic Performance

Abstract

Spiral plate heat exchangers are well suitable for handling fluids with features linked to fouling, high viscosities, fluids with suspended fragments of solids and process streams with tough heat transfer targets. Correlations to describe the thermal and hydraulic performance are a function of the geometrical configuration of the equipment. The present work shows procedures to design spiral plate heat exchangers as a function of the fluid arrangements, government flow, as well whether the thermal equipment is for condensing, cooling or heating duty. An additional study looking for determining the geometrical variables that allow to enhance and improve the thermal and hydraulic performance is presented. Moreover, computational fluid dynamics to validate the thermal and hydraulic method is performed.

Energy and exergy analysis of spiral turns in optimum design spiral plate heat exchangers

“…37 To begin with, the results of internal temperature variations along the SPHE channels, obtained from solving equations given herein, were compared with those calculated based on CFD simulations. Following assumptions are considered to analyze the designed SPHE model: (I) With assumption of no heat leakage to the environment and uniform fluid distributions in inlet and outlet of channels, a 2D geometry of channels was selected, (II) The fluids in channels were deemed as incompressible and non-isothermal fluids, (III) Turbulence model of k-ε 13 (RANS) was chosen to analyze the turbulent regime of fluids in channels, and (IV) Three CFD simulations with different numbers of quad meshes were implemented to reveal the accuracy of temperature distribution and to study the grid independence conditions of the results. The design conditions and geometry parameters of the SPHE for the first case study are given in Table 1.…”

“…Picon Nunez et al [7][8][9] embraced the concept of maximizing pressure drops in the thermal design of CHEs, 10,11 and proposed alternative methods to design SPHEs with minimum size. Moreover, Guha and Unde 12 and Davalos et al 13 took up the idea of optimum size, and respectively proposed a mathematical model for optimal channel plate width and thickness and developed a new design algorithm for different flow arrangements. In a newly proposed algorithm, Sabouri Shirazi et al 14 targeted the optimal size of SPHE with higher compactness and performance by defining optimum geometric aspect ratio (GAR) in SPHEs.…”

“…Khoshvaght-Aliabadi et al [46][47][48] studied the effect of nanofluid in minichannels with different cross-section configurations, including square and rectangular types, on heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop. Meanwhile, CFD simulations were used in SPHE studies to validate the analytical calculations 8,13,49 or to assess the experimental results. 50 In addition, studying the effects of different nanofluids on thermal and hydraulic performance improvement were conducted in SPHEs recently by Bahiraei et al, [51][52][53] Mazaheri and Bahiraei, 54 Rostami et al, 55 and Khodabandeh et al 56 According to previous research available on the thermal design of SPHEs, few researchers tried to propose a general optimal design algorithm for the SPHEs to consider all aspects of design factors including thermal, hydraulic, geometric, and economic parameters.…”