Iranian Journal of Mechanical Engineering Transactions of ISME

Iranian Journal of Mechanical Engineering Transactions of ISME

Performance enhancement of air coolers using the flow turbulator

Authors
Siroos Saeb
Mohammadreza Jafari Nasr 1
Mohammad Ghadimi 2
1 Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Roudehen Branch, Islamic Azad University, Roudehen, Iran
Abstract
Applications of heat transfer enhancement by tube inserts (turbulators) have been used in many industries such as power plants, refineries and petrochemicals plants. The main objective is typically viewed primarily as a means to improve and to intensify the thermal performance, size and capital cost reduction of heat exchangers and air coolers. This article introduces a procedure for considering of heat transfer enhancement in a typical air cooler using different turbulators such as Wire coils, Twisted tape and Wire matrixes. Due to increase of the effective surface area, increase of eddies and back mixing in fluid and consequently increase of heat transfer rate, the required heat transfer area is reduced significantly. The case study shows application of wire coil inserts is more effective than others and goes beyond the size reduction. The comparison is revealed that about 20 percent improvement in total cost for 10 years operation of the existing air cooler equipped with the turbulator
Keywords
Flow turbulator
Air cooler
Wire coils
Twisted tape
Wire matrix
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Iranian Journal of Mechanical Engineering Transactions of ISME
Volume 17, Issue 2 - Serial Number 39
Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer
Summer 2015
Pages 107-124

  • Receive Date 23 August 2015