PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF A SHELL AND TUBE HEAT EXCHANGER AT DIFFERENT OPERATIONAL AND DESIGN PARAMETERS

الملخص

Abstract

Shell and tube heat exchangers are widely used in the industrial chemical processes, especially in refineries, due to their main advantages over other types of heat exchangers. The concerned shell and tube heat exchanger that studied in the paper is used at ZWETINA OIL COMPANY. Extensive simulations of steady state thermal analysis were carried out by using MATLAB R2013a software in an attempt to determine quantitative combined and overlapping relationships among the heat exchanger performance and its associated design and operating parameters such as heat transfer coefficient, friction coefficient, length, and pressure drop. Different tube wall materials and fluid streams were also simulated in order to investigate their effect on the heat exchanger effectiveness. The results show the total heat transfer increases with the increase of tube length and  decreasing the input temperature. The pressure drop on the shell side increases with increasing both the flow velocity and number of baffles. The pressure drop on the pipe side increases with increasing both the flow velocity and number of passages. The pressure drop increases with increasing the fluid density. The Nusselt number increases when the increase of internal heat transfer coefficient and decreasing the thermal conductivity.