Experimental performance comparison of shell-side heat transfer for shell-and-tube heat exchangers with middle-overlapped helical baffles and segmental baffles

Presented in this paper are experimental test and comparison for several shell-and-tube heat exchangers, one with segmental baffles and four with helical baffles at helix angles of 20∘, 30∘, 40∘ and 50∘, respectively. The results show that, based on the same shell-side flow rate, the heat transfer coefficient of the heat exchanger with helical baffles is lower than that of the heat exchanger with segmental baffles while the shell-side pressured drop of the former is even much lower than that of the later. Further enhancement techniques should be incorporated in order to enhance shell-side heat transfer based on the same flow rate. The comparison of heat transfer coefficient per unit pressure-drop (and pumping power) versus shell-side volume flow rate shows that (1) the heat exchanger with helical baffles have significant performance advantage over the heat exchanger with segmental baffles; (2) for the same shell inner diameter, the performance of heat exchanger with helical baffles with 30° helix angle is better than that of 20°, and the performance of 40° helix angle is better than that of 50° helix angle. The heat exchanger with helical baffles of 40° angle shows the best performance among the five heat exchangers tested.