Designing a Helical Coil Heat Exchanger

Abstract

Heat exchangers are the important engineering systems with wide variety of applications including power plants, nuclear reactors, refrigeration and air-conditioning systems, heat recovery systems, chemical processing , food industries and  commonly used for heating of curde oil with steam during oil production. Helical coils have been used in wide variety of applications due to simplicity in manufacturing and  its capacityaccommodate a large heat transfer area in a small space, with high heat transfer coefficients. Flow in curved tube is different from the flow in straight tube because of the presence of the centrifugal forces. These centrifugal forces generate a secondary flow, normal to the primary direction of flow with circulatory effects that increases both the friction factor and rate of heat transfer. The aim of this work is to design a helical coil heat exchanger through a scientific methodology that includes many steps to obtain an experimental HCHE, calculating the number of turns needed to obtain the required amount of heat exchanged between the operating fluids and determining the rest of the design factors for this exchanger .