Author : P.Eswar Raja Babu

Majority of all heat exchanger applications in field of pharmaceutical industries, dairy , petrochemical ,oil refining, crude oil units power generation plants employ the use of conventional shell -tube type and plate type heat exchangers. It is estimated and observed that shell and tube technology is a cost effective, proven solution for a wide variety of heat transfer requirements. However, there are limitations with this technology. Factors such as inefficient usage of shell side, pressure drop, and dead or low flow zones around the baffles where fouling and corrosion can occur, and tube vibration etc may eventually result in equipment failure. This paper presents a recent innovation and development of a latest heat exchanger technology, known as Twisted Tube technology, which has been able to overcome the limitations of the conventional technology, this technology provides solution to almost all mentioned problems and provide good overall heat transfer coefficients through tube side enhancement. This paper primarily focuses on thermal analysis on twisted tube Heat exchangers

Keywords: Twisted tube heat exchanger, Thermal boundary layers, Reynolds Number, Overall film heat transfer coefficient, Number of transfer units, Logarithmic mean temperature difference, vortex stability, effectiveness, Heat transfer Regimes

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.5, No.4 (Aug-2015)