Third International Conference on Computational Methods for Thermal Problems

THERMACOMP2014, June2-4, 2014, Lake Bled, Slovenia

N. Massarotti, P.Nithiarasuand B. Sarler(Eds.)

DYNAMIC BEHAVIOUR OF THREE FLUID HEAT

EXCHANGERS SUBJECT TO STEP CHANGE IN THE HOT
FLUID INLET TEMPERATURE
Vinayakaraddy , Meghana H. Chaturvedi,V. Krishna,K. N. Seetharamu
Department of Mechanical Engineering, P.E.S. Institute of Technology, Bangalore - 560085,
India
vinayakapesit@gmail.com,meghana.chaturvedi@gmail.com;vkrishna@pes.edu;
knseetharamu@yahoo.com.

K.Veerabhadrappa
Department of Mechanical Engineering, B.M.S. College of Engineering, Bangalore - 560019,
India.
kavadiki@yahoo.com;

ABSTRACT
Three-fluid heat exchangers find wide usage in chemical processes and cryogenics. Knowledge
of dynamic behaviour of heat exchangers is necessary for designing control and regulation
systems of different industrial processes and operations, such as in nuclear reactors, cryogenic
and petrochemical process plants. In the current paper, dynamic behaviour of three-fluid heat
exchangers is analyzed using the finite element method. The solution is obtained for a parallel-
flow three-fluid heat exchanger with two thermal communications for step change in
temperature at the inlet hot fluid. The variation of fluids’ exit temperatures, temperature
profiles, and effectiveness with time, and the time to reach steady state, are discussed.

Keywords: three-fluid heat exchangers, finite element method, dynamic model, transient
analysis.

1. Introduction

Systems that deal with ammonia gas synthesis, purification and liquefaction of hydrogen, air
separation systems and helium-air separation units are typical applications which make use of
three-fluid heat exchangers. In the general design process of multi-fluid heat exchangers, the
stationary operating conditions are of decisive importance; however, in reality heat exchangers
frequently undergo transients resulting from external load variations and regulations.
Knowledge of dynamic behaviour of heat exchangers is necessary for designing control and
regulation systems of different industrial processes and operations, such as in nuclear reactors,
cryogenic and petrochemical process plants. In case of the three fluid heat exchangers there is a
lot of literature available to describe the steady state behaviour of heat exchangers [1, 2, 3].
There are very less papers published regarding the transient behaviour of three fluid heat
exchangers. Sekulic and Herman [6] solved numerically the set of partial differential equations
describing temperature field in a counter-flow three-fluid heat exchanger. They used the
Wendroff implicit finite-difference approximation and steady state initial conditions. Sekulic et
al [7] studied experimentally and numerically transient temperature fields in a three-fluid heat
exchanger with two thermal connections. The experiments confirmed the accuracy of the
method used in [6]. A semi-analytical solution for a three-fluid parallel-flow heat exchanger
with two thermal communications and the steady-state initial conditions was formulated by
Bielski and Malinowski [8]. Theyapplied the Laplace transform technique with numerical
inversion. Bielski and Malinowski [9] derived fully analytical expressions for temperatures in a
parallel-flow three-fluid heat exchanger with two heat connections between the fluids, constant
temperature in one channel, the uniform temperature initial conditions, and a step increase in the
inlet temperature of one fluid . As per the best knowledge of the authors none of the papers have
discussed the effect of the change in the inlet temperature on outlet temperatures,
effectiveness,time to reach steady state are not discussed.In the present paper, finite element
 Third International Conference on Computational Methods for Thermal Problems
THERMACOMP2014, June2-4, 2014, Lake Bled, Slovenia
N. Massarotti, P.Nithiarasuand B. Sarler(Eds.)

method has been used to analyse the transient behaviour of three-fluid heat exchanger, subject
to a step change in the temperature hot fluids at the inlet. The fluids’ exit
temperatures,effectiveness and time to reach steady state, are discussed for various cases.

2. Mathematical Model

The solution is obtained for a three fluid heat exchanger with two thermal communications with
pipe configuration as shown in the Fig (1). Channels 1, 2 and 3 represent the paths for the
intermediate, hot and the cold fluids respectively. The following assumptions are used: (a) All
properties are constant with time and space. (b) There is no axial conduction in the pipes or the
fluids (c) Within a stream the temperature distribution is uniform in the transverse direction and
equal to the average temperature of the fluid. (d) There is no heat source or sink in the heat
exchanger or in any of the fluids (e) There is no phase change in the fluid streams (f) The heat
transfer area is constant along the length of the heat exchanger (g) There is no heat transfer with
the ambient i.e., the heat exchanger is adiabatic (i) The flow is assumed to be turbulent in all the
channels and fully developed.

Heat exchanger is divided into number of elements and governing equations of each of element
in the heat exchanger are based on the above assumptions,
∂T i ∂T
Intermediate Fluid ∂t
+ Pi,e ∂Xi = bih (Th –Ti) (1)

∂T h ∂T
Hot Fluid ∂t
+ Ph.e ∂Xh = bhi (T1 –T2) + bhc (Tc-Th) (2)

∂T c ∂T
Cold Fluid ∂t
+ Pc,e ∂Xc = bch (Th –Tc) (3)

Non- Dimensional parameters used are

L x Vn k nj
Le= n , X = L , Pn,e= Le
, bnj= ρ (4)
e n C pn A n

3. Finite Element Method

The heat exchanger is divided in to a number of elements. For all fluids a linear variation of
temperature in each of the element is assumed as the differential equations are first order. The
fluid temperature at any point in each of the element is given by,
Ti(x,t) = N1Ti,in(x,t) +N2Ti,out(x,t) (5)
Th(x,t) = N1Th,in(x,t) +N2Th,out(x,t) (6)
Tc(x,t) = N1Tc,in(x,t) +N2Tc,out(x,t) (7)
Where N1 and N1 are the shape functions defined by
N1=1-X N2=X (8)
The differential equations Eqs. (1) – (3) are solved using the Galerkin’s method of minimising
weighted residuals [10]. The governing equations are reduced to a set of algebraic equations.
The discretised governing equations are written in matrix form for each element
[K]{T}+[C]{∂T/∂t}={f} (9)
We apply implicit method [10], to equation (9) and it reduces to
([K]+([C]/∆t)){T}t+∆t - ([C]/∆t){T}t = {f} (10)
[K}is stiffness matrix, [C] capacitance matrix, [T] temperature matrix; {f} is load vector The
elemental matrices are assembled to give the global stiffness, capacitance, load matrix and the
boundary conditions are re-enforced to get the temperatures along the heat exchanger .The
system of equations are solved by using the MATLAB tool.

3.1 Boundary and initial conditions

3.1.1 Step change in inlet temperature Initial conditions: (11)
Ti(x, 0) = Tis (x)
Th(x, 0) = Ths (x)
 Third International Conference on Computational Methods for Thermal Problems
THERMACOMP2014, June2-4, 2014, Lake Bled, Slovenia
N. Massarotti, P.Nithiarasuand B. Sarler(Eds.)

Tc(x, 0) = Tcs (x)

Boundary conditions : (12)
Ti(0,t)= Ti,in +∆Ti,in
Th(0,t)= Th,in +∆Th,in
Tc(0,t)= Tc,in+∆Tc,in
4.Effectiveness
Cooling of the hot fluid has been identified as the objective of the three fluid heat exchanger
adopted for analysis. Cooling effectiveness of hot fluid for a three-fluid heat exchanger can be
based on its temperature effectiveness or thermal effectiveness [2, 4].
Q h ,actual
εh = Q h ,max
(13)
The expressions for 𝑄 h,actualand 𝑄 h,max ,for various combinations have been presented earlier in
[2, 4]. When the thermal capacity of hot fluid is greater than the thermal capacity of the other
two fluids then 𝑄 h,maxgiven by
𝑄 h,max= Ch(Th,in– Tc,in) (14)

5. Results and discussion

Solution is obtained for a particular case when kih= 17.361 W/mK ,khc= 50.001 W/mK,
Vi=0.5ms-1, Vh=1ms-1, Vc=0.6ms-1, Di=0.008m, Dh=0.02m, Dc=0.03m, L=2m. Thermo physical
properties correspond with that of water. The following values for initial steady state are used:
T0i,in= 300C; T0h,in= 700C; T0c,in= 100C. The transient behaviour is studied when the hot fluid
undergoes a step change in temperature by ∆T.The solution was mesh independent at N=256
and 256 and ∆t = 0.001s.The effect of step changes in the inlet temperature of hot fluid are
shown in the Figs.(2a) – (2d). The step changes in the hot fluid inlet temperature do not reflect
in an immediate response in terms of the fluid exit temperatures. All the fluids take almost 2
seconds (approx.) to show a change in their exit temperatures. While the cold and intermediate
fluids show a relatively more gradual response, the hot fluid shows an abrupt response. An
increase in hot fluid inlet temperature results in more heat transfer between the hot and cold
fluids leading to an increase in the exit temperatures of the cold and intermediate fluid as shown
in Figs.(2a) &(2c). The hot fluid exit temperature is more influenced by the increase in its inlet
temperature than the increased heat transfer and as such its exit temperature is enhanced as
shown in Fig.(2b). This leads to reduced effectiveness as shown in Fig.(2d). Conversely, a
decrease in the inlet temperature of the hot fluid decreases its exit temperatures leading to an
increase in its effectiveness with respect to time as shown in Figs. (2b) and (2d). For any step
change in inlet temperature of the hot fluid the effectiveness converges to a single value. The
time to reach steady state for the hot, intermediate and cold fluids is 2.99 seconds, 4.07seconds,
and 3.39 seconds respectively for all the cases and is independent of the step change in inlet
temperature of the hot fluid.

6. Conclusions
The effect of step change in inlet temperatures on outlet temperatures, temperature profiles,
effectiveness, time to reach steady state is analysed using the finite element method. Due to
(increase/decrease) in hot fluid inlet temperature there is (increase/decrease) in the outlet
temperatures of all fluids, (decrease/increase) in effectiveness. Time to reach steady
stateremained same. The results presented give valuable inputs towards better understanding
of the behaviour of three fluid heat exchangers under dynamic behaviour.

References

[1] D. Shrivastava, T.A. Ameel, Three-fluid heat exchangers with three thermal
communications. Part B: Effectiveness evaluation, Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer 47 (2004)
3867–3875.
[2] V. Krishna, Pradeep, G. Hegde, N. Subramanian, K.N. Seetharamu, Effect of ambient
heat-in-leak on the performance of a three fluid heat exchanger, for cryogenic
 Third International Conference on Computational Methods for Thermal Problems
THERMACOMP2014, June2-4, 2014, Lake Bled, Slovenia
N. Massarotti, P.Nithiarasuand B. Sarler(Eds.)

applications, using finite element method, Int. J. Heat and Mass Transfer 55 (2012)
5459–5470.
[3] V. Krishna ,S.Spoorthi , PradeepG.Hegde , K.N.Seetharamu Effect of longitudinal wall
conduction on the performance of a three-fluid cryogenic heat exchanger with three
thermal communications , Int. J. Heat and Mass Transfer 62 (2013) 567–577.
[4] D.P. Sekulic, C.V. Herman, Transient temperature fields in a three fluid heat exchanger,
in: Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress of Refrigeration B, IIF, Vienna,
Austria, 1987, pp. 833–837.
[5] D.P. Sekulic, M. Dzolev, I. Kmecko, Dynamic behaviour of a three fluid heat
exchanger: the experimental study, in: J.F. Keffer, R.K. Shah, E.N. Ganic (Eds.),
Experimental Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics, and Thermodynamics, Elsevier, New
York, 1991, pp. 1338–1343.
[6] S. Bielski, L. Malinowski, A semi-analytical method for determining unsteady
temperature field in a parallel-flow three-fluid heat exchanger, International
Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer 30 (2003) 1071–1080.
[7] S. Bielski, L. Malinowski, An analytical method for determining transient temperature
field in a parallel-flow three-fluid heat exchanger, International Communications in
Heat and Mass Transfer 32 (2005) 1034–1044.
[8] Roland W. Lewis, PerumalNithiarasu, Kankanhalli N. Seetharamu, ‘Fundamentals of
Finite Element Method for Heat and Fluid Flow’, John Wiley and Sons, 2004.

Fig. (1): Schematic Fig.(2b). Variation of hot Fig.(2d).Variation of hot

representation of three- fluid exit temperature with fluid effectiveness with
fluid heat exchanger under time due to change in inlet time due to change in inlet
consideration temperature of hot fluid temperature of hot fluid
(T0h,in= 700C). (T0h,in= 700C).

Fig.(2a). Variation of Fig.(2c). Variation of cold

intermediate fluid exit fluid exit temperature with
temperature with time due time due to change in inlet
to change in inlet temperature of hot fluid
temperature of hot fluid (T0h,in= 700C).
(T0h,in= 700C).