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Heat transfer and pressure drop correlations for nned plate ceramic
heat exchangers
Helio Henrique Santomo Villanueva, Paulo Eduardo Batista de Mello*
rio da FEI, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Av. Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, 3972, Sa
Centro Universita ~o Bernardo do Campo, SP,
CEP 09850-901, Brazil
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: The use of ceramic materials is a good option to build heat exchangers for high temperature applications
Received 30 October 2014 when cost is a concern. This work presents heat transfer and pressure drop correlations for one nned
Received in revised form plate heat exchanger evaluated using CFD (Computational uid dynamics) simulations. One adequate
14 April 2015
turbulence model was used to include transitional Reynolds number range. The inuence of geometrical
Accepted 15 April 2015
Available online xxx
parameters is included into the correlations, following the same approach commonly used for offset strip
ns heat exchangers. For validation purposes, the CFD results are compared to experiments for one
particular geometrical conguration. The resultant correlations for the high temperature heat exchanger
Keywords:
HTHE
could be used for optimization purposes, considering possible applications. Analysis of simulation results
Ceramic heat exchanger revealed signicant heat transfer enhancement produced by a horseshoe vortex formed in the frontal
CFD part of the ns.
Biomass 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.04.017
0360-5442/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Villanueva HHS, de Mello PEB, Heat transfer and pressure drop correlations for nned plate ceramic heat
exchangers, Energy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.04.017
2 H.H.S. Villanueva, P.E.B. de Mello / Energy xxx (2015) 1e8
2. Geometry
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exchangers, Energy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.04.017
H.H.S. Villanueva, P.E.B. de Mello / Energy xxx (2015) 1e8 3
Table 2
D Characteristics of each geometrical conguration simulated.
g 1 (3)
D2 Code Dh (mm) s a (m2/m3) Afr (mm2) Aff (mm2) A (mm2)
The dimensions D1 and L2 are xed at 4 and 17 mm respectively, 1-2-2 4.1071 0.556 541.07 9.0 5.0 82.78
for all simulations. It is reasonable to consider that would be hard to 2-1-2 5.3647 0.556 414.23 13.5 7.5 95.07
2-2-1 4.6067 0.500 434.15 12.0 6.0 88.57
construct much ner ns with ceramics, so that D1 is xed at 4 mm.
2-2-2 5.2541 0.556 422.95 13.5 7.5 97.07
This value is feasible, as shown in Ref. [10]. The investigation of the 2-2-3 5.7973 0.600 413.99 15.0 9.0 105.57
geometry inuence was conducted for three different values of 2-3-2 5.1481 0.556 431.66 13.5 7.5 99.07
each parameter, maintaining each one bellow unity, as shown in 3-2-2 6.1069 0.556 363.89 18.0 10.0 111.35
Table 1. A code for each geometrical conguration was created to
name them.
It is important to note that the variations in geometry inuence " #
some calculation parameters, as the hydraulic diameter 4, total G2 ni n
A nm
2 o
frontal area Afr, minimum free-ow area Aff and heat transfer area A. DP 1s 1 f (9)
2 ni sAfr ni
All these parameters are dened as in Ref. [11] and are shown in
Table 2. Constant values for thermophysical properties are used in all
simulations. It is the correct way to obtain correlations for friction
4Aff and Colburn factors. Thermophysical properties must be included
Dh L (4)
A in calculation during design (or simulation) of a particular heat
For HTHE design purposes, the formulations for the Dh, a and s exchanger. Due to this, the friction factor simplies to 10.
are essential. These parameters, as a function of l, d and g are given
2DPrsAfr
by (5e7). f (10)
G2 A
1
L2 1 p p 1 1 Temperature is imposed in the domain inlet and walls as
Dh 2L2 1 g lg 1 1
gD1 d 4 2 d l boundary conditions. The resultant temperature at the domain
(5) outlet permits to obtain the heat exchanger effectiveness 11, for the
particular case where the wall has constant temperature. The
temperature values imposed as boundary conditions for Tw and Ti
L2 1 p p 1 1 1
a 2lg 1 1 L (6) do not inuence the heat exchanger effectiveness and Colburn
gD1 d 4 2 d l 2
factor for simulations with constant thermophysical properties.
Aff To Ti
s 1g (7) (11)
Afr Tw Ti
The number of transfer units NTU is evaluated from effective-
ness using (12).
3. Methodology
NTU ln1 (12)
The next two sections discuss how the friction and Colburn The overall heat transfer coefcient is determined from NTU
correlations are obtained from the CFD simulations and the equa- using (13).
tions relating the laminar, transition and turbulent ow regimes.
C$NTU
Uh (13)
A
3.1. Friction and colburn factors
Finally, the Colburn correlation is obtained with 14.
Pressure drop is evaluated from the CFD results with 8. The
pressure is xed at the outlet of the domain (boundary condition) Uh $s$Afr $Pr 2=3
j (14)
and the resultant average pressure at the inlet permits the pressure _ p
m$c
drop determination.
The Reynolds number, following methodology developed in
DP Pi Po (8) Ref. [11], is dened by 15.
Friction factor for compact heat exchangers is dened in Ref. [11] G$Dh
using 9. Re (15)
m
The ow-stream mass velocity G depends on the mass ow rate
Table 1 and can be evaluated using 16.
Geometrical congurations simulated numerically.
Code H L D2 l d g m_ rU
G (16)
1-2-2 4 12 9 1.000 0.333 0.444
s$Afr s
2-1-2 6 10 9 0.667 0.400 0.444
2-2-1 6 12 8 0.667 0.333 0.500 For each simulation, one value of Reynolds to be investigated is
2-2-2 6 12 9 0.667 0.333 0.444 xed and mass ow rate is imposed in the inlet of the calculation
2-2-3 6 12 10 0.667 0.333 0.400 domain using 15 and 16. The ratio of free-ow area to frontal area s,
2-3-2 6 14 9 0.667 0.286 0.444 used in equations (10), (14) and (16), is dened by equation (7). This
3-2-2 8 12 9 0.500 0.333 0.444
parameter is used to obtain one estimate of velocity in cross-
Please cite this article in press as: Villanueva HHS, de Mello PEB, Heat transfer and pressure drop correlations for nned plate ceramic heat
exchangers, Energy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.04.017
4 H.H.S. Villanueva, P.E.B. de Mello / Energy xxx (2015) 1e8
sectional area restrictions where ow accelerates. It depends on a result, in regions of the domain that smooth gradients are present,
geometrical conguration of the heat exchanger only. the CFX high-resolution scheme tends to CDS. At regions near to
discontinuities, the high-resolution scheme tends to the upwind
3.2. Correlations scheme (rst order) to obtain a bounded solution. According to
software documentation, in a simplied one dimensional case, the
Friction and Colburn factors are dependent on Reynolds number algorithm resembles to Total Variation Diminishing TVD scheme.
and geometrical parameters l, d and g. In order to state mathe- The convergence was evaluated monitoring the root mean square
matically this dependence, appropriate equations are used (17e18). (RMS) of the normalized residuals for all equations. We took care to
This form of the correlations was rst suggested in Ref. [13]. check the convergence of the simulation using additional monitor
points. Pressure and temperature were monitored during the so-
0:1
lution to guarantee that they reached a stable level. The conver-
f a1$Rea2 $ 1 c1$Rec2 $la3 $da4 $ga5 (17)
gence criteria for the RMS of the normalized residuals was set to
1.0 108.
0:1
j b1$Reb2 $ 1 d1$Red2 $lb3 $db4 $gb5 (18)
4.4. Mesh
The use of these power law equations are justied because in
both deep laminar and fully turbulent ow regimes, the variations Computational costs and quality of simulations are directly
of f and j follow a constant-slope function at the logelog graph [13]. connected with the mesh used to discretize the domain. Hexahe-
drons describe the domain with a lesser number of elements. To
4. Numerical model achieve a good solution near walls, a block strategy with attention at
the Y value, the dimensionless distance to the wall, and the
All the CFD simulations were conducted using the Ansys CFX 14 expansion ratio was taken. In the CFX documentation, for the
nite volume code. The description of the code is beyond the scope transitional turbulence model, the Y must be between 0.0001 and
of this paper but can be easily found in its documentation or in the 8, where the desirable optimal value is one. The expansion ratio
literature. Only relevant information is given hereafter. must be between 1.05 and 1.4 where the desirable value is 1.1. To
cover all cases, we made three different meshes: one for the laminar
regimes and one for each Reynolds number on the turbulent regime.
4.1. Governing equations
According to the CFX documentation, for steady state simula- 4.5. Mesh dependency tests
tions with heat transfer, the code resolves numerically the con-
servation equations given by 19e21. To ensure precise results independent of the mesh density, a
dependency study of meshes that satised the CFX documentation
V$rU 0 (19) criteria was developed for Reynolds number of 10,000. The results
are presented on Table 3. These results show that once the criteria
V$rU5U VP V$t SM (20) from the CFX documentation are satised, the density of the mesh
does not inuence the results of f and j correlations witch are the
main results of interest.
k
V$rUT V$ VT ST (21) Applying a block strategy with the expansion rate between 1.1
cp and 1.2 for all geometries, the maximum Y veried was in the
The partial differential equations (19) and (21) express the range of 0.76e4.45. Details about the meshes are shown in Table 4.
conservation of mass, momentum and energy respectively. In order A typical mesh used in the simulations is shown in Fig. 4.
to solve them numerically, we used the boundary conditions dis-
cussed in section 2 and appropriate numerical schemes. 5. Experimental results
4.2. Turbulence model The experimental results used for validation were obtained with
a procedure detailed in Ref. [10]. The heat exchanger is constructed
The results presented in this paper cover ows from laminar to with ceramic plates, as shown in Fig. 1. In summary, measured air
turbulent regimes, modelled with the transitional SST (Shear Stress ow rates are supplied to the heat exchanger, one of them is heated
Transport) model [14]. Using four additional equations, this tur- before entering the heat exchanger. The air ow rates are controlled
bulence model can resolve both regimes and the transition. To in order to obtain the same Reynolds number in hot and cold sides.
evaluate and conrm the accuracy of this model, some simulations Inlet and outlet temperatures are measured using thermocouples.
have been made comparing its results with laminar model (no The Colburn j factor is determined by these measurements, as
turbulence model) and SST model (for high Reynolds number). The described in section 3.1, but with the number of transfer units NTU
transitional model reproduces these extreme conditions satisfac-
torily. One detailed description of the model with an evaluation of
Table 3
its capabilities to predict heat transfer in pipes is presented in Mesh dependency results.
Ref. [15].
Volumes 103 Y j f
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6. Numerical results
Fig. 5. Schematic representation of experimental set-up. Fig. 6. Results obtained with the central condition (code 2-2-2 in Table 1).
Please cite this article in press as: Villanueva HHS, de Mello PEB, Heat transfer and pressure drop correlations for nned plate ceramic heat
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6 H.H.S. Villanueva, P.E.B. de Mello / Energy xxx (2015) 1e8
0:1 l
0:22
unsatisfactory, due to the use of inappropriate pressure trans-
jcentral 1:0495$Re0:646 $ 1 7:4$Re12 $
0:667 ducers. Besides, the Reynolds range was very narrow: between 200
0:08 and 500. After improvements in the experimental setup described
d
$ in Ref. [10] and the construction of a second ceramic heat exchanger
0:333 prototype, new experimental results were obtained. The compari-
(25) son between CFD simulations and these updated experimental data
is presented in Fig. 10. The CFD simulations reproduced the
6.3. Comparison with experiments experimental friction factor with good accuracy, over the entire
Reynolds range considered. Deviations around 20% were observed
In order to validate the CFD simulations we conducted a com- for Colburn factor at the upper Reynolds range.
parison between numerical results and experiments reported in The geometry used in the experiments of [10] lead to geomet-
Ref. [10]. These experimental data, obtained with a rst prototype, rical parameters dened as l, d and g in current paper equal to
revealed some limitations. The friction factor characterization was
Please cite this article in press as: Villanueva HHS, de Mello PEB, Heat transfer and pressure drop correlations for nned plate ceramic heat
exchangers, Energy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.04.017
H.H.S. Villanueva, P.E.B. de Mello / Energy xxx (2015) 1e8 7
Fig. 12. Wall and ns coloured by heat transfer coefcient (in W/m2 K) and streamlines
in grey.
qw
6.4. Heat transfer behaviour hlocal (26)
Tw Ti
Local heat transfer coefcient, dened by equation (26).,was Fig. 12 presents the streamlines at the frontal part of the n,
obtained numerically and is shown in Fig. 11. As expected, the heat where heat enhancement is veried. The vortex formed in this
transfer coefcient near the inlet boundary is higher and decreases region increase local heat transfer and explains the horseshoe
along the ow direction. As the ow develops, the difference be- shapped contours observed in Fig. 11. This behaviour is well known
tween uid temperature and wall temperature decreases with a and docummented in literature. Similar behaviour is observed in
consequent decrease in the local heat ux qw. As a result, the local numerical investigations [16] and experiments [17].
heat transfer coefcient decreases in the ow direction because the Pressure eld is shown in Fig. 13 and reveals that the pressure
denominator in equation (26) is constant. decreases at each new row of ns. One adverse pressure gradient
After the rst row of ns on Fig. 11, local heat transfer may be observed in the leading edge of the ns and is the cause of
enhancement with horseshoe shape is observed in front of the ns, the horseshoe vortex observed in Fig. 12.
Fig. 11. Comparison of local heat transfer coefcient (in W/m2 K) obtained with simulations including three and six rows of ns.
Please cite this article in press as: Villanueva HHS, de Mello PEB, Heat transfer and pressure drop correlations for nned plate ceramic heat
exchangers, Energy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.04.017
8 H.H.S. Villanueva, P.E.B. de Mello / Energy xxx (2015) 1e8
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mental data rst presented in Ref. [10], with increased Reynolds
range. The validation conducted in this paper permits to afrm that Nomenclature
CFD simulations are capable of predicting pressure drop and heat
transfer with good accuracy. A: exchanger total heat transfer area, m2
The correlations for Colburn and friction factors developed from Aff: exchanger minimum free-ow area, m2
Afr: exchanger total frontal area, m2
CFD simulation include the inuence of Reynolds number and two C: heat capacity rate, W/K
geometrical parameters of the ns. The inuence of the third cp: specic heat, J/(kg K)
geometrical parameter investigated has no signicance. It is D1: n thickness, m
D2: lateral n offset, m
important to note that the geometrical congurations investigated
Dh: hydraulic diameter, m
present different values of compactness, as shown in Table 2 by the f: friction correlation, dimensionless
parameter a. For some applications, compactness of the HTHE may G: exchanger ow-stream mass velocity, kg/(s m2)
have higher importance than performance. Another concern is hlocal: wall heat transfer coefcient, W/(m2 K)
H: high of the ns, m
related to feasibility of ceramic HTHE. As shown in Ref. [10], the rst j: Colburn correlation, dimensionless
prototype constructed with alumina did not supported the thermo k: thermal conductivity, W/(mK)
structural load and presented cracks in the end of experiments, L: length of the n, m
L2: length of n cell, m
conducted at 890 C. m_: mass ow, kg/s
NTU: number of transfer units, dimensionless
Acknowledgements P: pressure, Pa
Pr: Prandtl number, dimensionless
qw: wall heat ux, W/m2
rio da
The authors would like to acknowledge Centro Universita Re: Reynolds number, dimensionless
FEI and Fundaa~o de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sa
~o Paulo SM: source term in momentum equation
ST: source term in energy equation
(FAPESP) for the research support. St: Stanton number, dimensionless
T: temperature, C
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To: mean temperature at the exchanger outlet, C
Tw: temperature of the exchanger wall, C
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Please cite this article in press as: Villanueva HHS, de Mello PEB, Heat transfer and pressure drop correlations for nned plate ceramic heat
exchangers, Energy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.04.017