Heat Transfer Enhancement in a Double Pipe Heat Exchanger by Insertion of Propeller-Type Swirl Generators

This paper describes an experimental study of turbulent convective heat transfer and flow friction characteristics in a double tube heat exchanger equipped with propellers (2 blade-type). The propellers are used as the decaying swirl generators in the inner tube. The experiments were performed using the propellers with four different interval lengths (l = 1D, 2D, 3D and 4D where D is diameter of the inner tube), for the Reynolds number ranging from 5000 to 32,000, using water with temperature of 27°C and 70°C as cold and hot working fluids, respectively. The data of the tube equipped with the propellers are reported together with those of the plain tube, for comparison. The obtained results demonstrate that the heat transfer rate in term of Nusselt number (Nu) and friction factor (f) in the tube with propellers are higher than those in the plain tube at the similar operating conditions. This is due to the chaotic mixing and efficient interruption of thermal boundary layer caused by the propellers. In addition, the Nusselt number and friction factor in the tube fitted with the propellers increase as the interval length decreases. Depending on Reynolds number and interval length, Nusselt numbers and friction factors in the tube fitted with the propellers are augmented to 1.95 to 2.3 times and 5.8 to 13.2 times of those in the plain tube. In addition, the correlations of the Nusselt number (Nu) and the friction factor (f) for tube fitted with the propellers are reported and the performance evaluation to access the real benefits of using the turbulators is also determined.