Investigation on Heat Transfer Characteristics of Water Through Narrow Annulus

A study is carried out to investigate the forced convective heat transfer characteristics of water through narrow annulus. For most works undertaken before were mainly concerned with the heat transfer characteristics of heat removal systems, the experiments herein are conducted to detect the heat transfer characteristics of heated fluid, as well as cooled fluid, flowing through narrow annulus. In the experiments, directions of flow include horizontal, upstream and downstream. The Reynolds number range, based on the annular hydraulic diameter, of 10 to 30,000 is covered in the experiments. During the experiments, the transitions from laminar to turbulent convective heat transfer are carefully observed. It is found that fully turbulent convective heat transfer is achieved at a lower Reynolds number in narrow annulus than that in larger tubes. When the Reynolds number is lower than 150, the heat transfer is degraded attributed to the slow flow rate and axial heat conduction. The experimental results indicate that the heat transfer characteristics of narrow annular flow are different from that of lager, more conventionally sized pipe flow. A convective heat transfer correlation is developed and the comparisons are made with the correlations of other works.