EFFECTS OF FIN PITCH AND NUMBER OF TUBE ROWS ON THE AIR SIDE PERFORMANCE OF HERRINGBONE WAVY FIN AND

TUBE HEAT EXCHANGERS. 1.0 Introduction

The wavy fin and tube in combination is mostly and usual plane fin and tube heat exchangers and in many industrial applications. 1.1 Objective

To investigate the effects of a fin pitch and number of tube rows on the air side performance of fin and tube heat exchangers having herringbone wavy fin configuration at various fin thickness. 1.2 i. Problem statement Usually, the heat transfer is normally limited by the thermal resistance on the air side of the heat exchanger. ii. For the air side performance of fin and tube heat exchangers, it is difficult due to the complexity of the air flow pattern across the heat exchangers. 2.0 2.1 Solution Mathematical Solution

2.2

Numerical Analysis

2.3

Experiment Apparatus

Working fluid: air and hot water Main components:

 Heat exchanger (made from aluminium herringbone wavy finned, copper tube) Water flow loop consisted of a storage tank, an 18kW electric heater, a centrifugal pump, a control unit and a flow meter with 0.25LPM resolution. Air supply Instrumentation Data acquisition Inverter (Yaskawa, CIMR-G5A47P5) Constant Anemometer 90CN10/C10 (CTA, Dantec) with automatic probe setup. The probe used in this experiment was the wedge shaped, right angled film probe 55R33 with non-cylindrical sensor in 1 0.2mm. Working parameters: There were four pressure taps on each wall upstream and downstream of the test section and nozzle. The inlet water temperature ranging between 55 and 65_C, the water volumetric flow rate ranging between 10 and 14LPM, and the air frontal velocity ranging between 1 and 6m/s. The uncertainty of the heat balance between the air side and tube side was within 3%.

3.0

Results and Discussions

 From the experiment, it shows that when the Colburn factors decrease, the Reynolds number will increase over the range. About the fin pitch, theres no significant effect on the heat transfer characteristic between both examined fin thicknesses. From here also, it shows that when the fin pitch increases with the same Reynolds number, the air flow inside the corrugated flow channel can be mixed better. When the fin pitch increases, the recirculation zone occurring downstream of the wavy apexes is consistently extended. From the data, it shows that when the friction factors decrease, the Reynolds number is increasing. In larger fin has the higher friction factor than a smaller fin pitch. Theres no effect for fin pitch in the friction factor at the low Reynolds number. When the Reynolds number and the downstream turbulence increases, the causing airflow mixing will increase. The effect between the numbers of tube rows on the heat transfer characteristic is dominated. In the same Reynolds number, the smaller number of tube rows in friction factor uniformly higher than the range of the Reynolds number. When the Reynolds number increases, the effect of number for tube rows were decreases.

4.0

Conclusion Theres no effect of the Colburn factor when change of the fin pitch. When the Reynolds number is higher than 2500, the friction factor and the fin pitch will increases. When the Reynolds number is less than 4000, the Colburn factor and the friction factor decrease with increasing number of tube rows. The Colburn factor and the friction factor are changed as the fin thickness is varied from 0.115mm to 0.250mm. However, the trends of the effects of fin pitch and number of tube rows on the Colburn factor and friction factor remain the same.