Research Article | Open Access
Experimental Investigation of the Performance of a Heat Exchanger with Triangular Baffles
Ujjwal Kumar Nayak , Ravi Shankar Prasad , Rajen Kumar Nayak
Pages: 3511-3521
Abstract
A set of the experiments were carried out to investigate and compare the heat transfer performance in a double
pipe concentrictube heat exchanger with and without the triangular baffles for both the parallel and counter
flow arrangements. The test section is a horizontal annular passage formed by two concentric tubes with an
inner to outer diameter ratio of 3.17 and length ofCu tube is 2438 mm and length of GI pipe is 1828.8mm. Heat
is transferred only from the inner tube in which hot fluid is flowing to the annulus which is well insulated.
Triangular baffles with dimensions of 4 mm base, 8mm height and 1.5 mm thickness are used in the present
study. In the beginning, we conducted the experiment without any baffle to get the performance parameter for
heat exchanger without baffles and then with the baffle of pitch 9”. The effects of the baffles spacing and mass
flow rate of fluid is studied on the thermal performance of heat exchanger. It is found that the effectiveness
increases with increase in flow rate of cold fluid and average effectiveness also increases, when pitch of baffle
is 9” by 1.42 in parallel flow and 1.34 in counter flow that of smooth tube respectively. The other performance
parameter like heat transfer coefficient and heat transfer rate obtained through experiment is also increases.
The effectiveness method is used for calculation of overall heat transfer coefficient and effectiveness.
Keywords
concentric tube, heat exchanger, triangular baffle, effectiveness, heat transfer