Heat Exchanger with Baffle Cut and Mixture Nano Fluid

Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger with Baffle Cut and Mixture Nano Fluid by ANSYS Fluent

Nano Fluid Influence on Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger Efficiency

A Shell and tube heat exchanger with baffle cut applying a Nanofluid is simulated by ANSYS Fluent software.

Heat exchangers have a wide range of applications in power generation, chemical and food industries, electronics, environmental engineering, heat dissipation, manufacturing, ventilation, refrigerators, space industries, and more. There are many ways to improve the thermal properties of a heat exchanger. These include creating plates to increase heat transfer, vibration, and the use of microchannels. Thermal efficiency can also be increased by increasing the conductivity of the working fluids. Fluids commonly used in industry, such as water, ethylene glycol, motor oil, etc., often have lower conductivity than solids. Solids can be used to improve performance in the form of solid particles (nanoparticles) added into the fluid and make a Nano Fluid. On the other hand, these particles can also cause scavenging or blockage of the channels or their corrosion, which itself has the potential to increase the conduction coefficient in order to increase efficiency.

Many materials can be used as nanoparticles. Since the thermal conductivity of materials, whether in the form of metal or non-metallic state Al2O3, CuO, TiO2, SiC, TiC, Ag, Au, Cu, and Fe are generally several times higher, even at a low concentration, which results in an effective heat transfer coefficient.

Heat Exchanger Applying Nano Fluid CFD Simulation and Geometry

3-D Geometry is designed by Design Modeler software. In order to model the four-layer baffle shell and tube heat exchanger to increase the effects of shell fluid circulation, geometry properties are described below in the table.

Mesh

The Heat exchanger was designed with a volume of 400,000 elements by ANSYS Meshing software.

Heat Exchanger Set-Up

Finally, in order to model the Nano Fluid, a multi-phase model using the Mixture method was used. In this model, the solid phase is also assumed to be fluid. In this case, two-phase fluid will interact to simulate the numerical model.

The properties of the used fluids will also be as follows. (All units are in accordance with the standard Fluent unit.)

Finally, the results are presented in the form of temperature contours and fluid path lines (to observe the effect of baffles) of the heat exchanger.