Numerical and experimental study on thermal performance of a novel shell and helically coiled tube heat exchanger design with integrated rings and discs

Shell and Helically Coiled Tube Heat Exchangers (SHCTHEXs) are utilized in energy conversion applications in industry and in various engineering systems. They are generally composed of a helically coiled tube and a shell covering it. This coiled structure of tubes, provides better heat transfer and takes less space. There is an ongoing interest in research on this type of heat exchangers. In this study, a new design was created modifying a simple type of conventional shell and helically coiled heat exchanger, by integrating discs and rings. These rings and discs were attached to the helically coiled tubes with the aim of performing as baffles restricting the shell side flow and creating turbulence. The thermal performance of a conventional heat exchanger was improved by this modification. The study was carried out both numerically and experimentally. At first step, two SHCTHEXs, one conventional; one modified, were designed with same overall geometric dimensions. Then created solid models were numerically simulated with same boundary conditions using ANSYS Fluent. Simulations were performed with various flow rates and the results were reported. According to the simulations, compared to the conventional one, with the modified heat exchanger 7.1% increase in average amount of heat transfer rate and around 20% increase in overall heat transfer coefficient were obtained. With the promising results taken by simulations, the modified heat exchanger was fabricated with the same dimensions and it was experimentally tested with same conditions in laboratory to verify the simulation results. Experimental results were in harmony with the simulations with little differences. The average differences between simulation and experimental values in terms of average amount of heat transfer rate were obtained as 2.4% for 3 l/min hot fluid flow rate and 3.5% for 4 l/min hot fluid flow rate. Overall heat transfer coefficient of modified SHCTHEX with circular baffles achieved in the range of 1050–1400 W/m2K. General outcomes of this study exhibited successful design of baffled SHCTHEX. •Numerical comparison between conventional and baffled shell and helically coiled heat exchangers.•Integrating discs and rings in order to guide flow through the coiled tube.•Experimental analysis of baffled shell and helically coiled heat exchanger.•An average improvement of 7% in heat transfer rate of modified heat exchanger.