Performance Improvement of Sinusoidal Baffled Heat Exchanger Using Different Two-phase Flow Mixture

Abstract

This study examines the impact of two-phase mixtures with no substantial phase change on the thermal performance of a Shell-and-tube Heat Exchanger equipped with sinusoidal baffles of 2 mm amplitude and 20 mm pitch. The two-phase mixtures include Air-Water (AW), Ethanol-Water (EW), Ethylene Glycol-Water (EGW) and Al₂O₃-Water (AlW). Comsol Multiphysics version 5.3, a computational fluid dynamics program based on finite elements, was used to carry out the simulation process and gather velocity, temperature, and pressure data. The information was used to calculate the pressure drop, heat transfer coefficient, and Performance Evaluation Criteria (PEC). The results suggest that adding 5% by volume of air, ethanol, ethylene glycol, and Al₂O3 to water improves heat transfer capacity significantly. The PEC for AW ranges from 1.294 to 1.484, whereas the PECs for EW, EGW, and AlW range from 1.316 to 1.527, 1.324 to 1.541, and 1.362 to 1.607, respectively. However, the PEC supplied by AlW was determined to be the greatest, while the PEC of AW was found to be the lowest. Therefore, this study demonstrates that using a mixture of two states of matter that does not entail phase transition significantly enhances the thermal performance of a sinusoidal baffle shell-and-tube heat exchanger.