Experimental Investigations on Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Characteristics of Helical Coil Heat Exchangers

The current research investigates the heat transfer and flow characteristics of fully developed laminar flow in helical and conical coil tube in tube heat exchangers. The investigation includes both experimental and numerical studies. Numerical studies have been carried out using the finite volume based software ANSYS Fluent. The major parameters identified to describe the heat transfer characteristics of helical coil heat exchangers are Reynolds number, Prandtl number, Dean number, non-dimensional pitch, pitch circle radius, curvature ratio and cone angle. Overall heat transfer coefficients are calculated, and the heat transfer coefficients are determined using Wilson plot. The numerical scheme is validated with the experimental results obtained from the present study and also with that reported in the literature.