CFD ANALYSIS OF HEAT TRANSFER IN A

HELICAL COIL HEAT EXCHANGER

A presentation created under the guidance of Prof. RS Mishra Sir [Ex Dean, Ex HOD, Ex
Chairman (DRC)], by :
Prashant [2K20/AE/52]
Shishank Shekher [2K20/AE/62]
Shubhank Arya [2K20/AE/68]
ABSTRACT
There is a wide application of coiled heat exchanger in the field of cryogenics and
other industrial applications for its enhanced heat transfer characteristics and
compact structure. Lots of researches are going on to improve the heat transfer rate
of the helical coil heat exchanger. Here, in this work, an analysis has been done for
a helical heat exchanger with constant heat transfer coefficient with turbulent flow.
There are various factors present that may affect the heat transfer characteristics of
the heat exchanger. Here, the experiment has been done by varying the curvature
ratio i.e. ratio of coil diameter to inner tube diameter and inlet velocity of the hot
fluid in the inner tube. The analysis has done using ANSYS 22 CFD methodology.
Different parameters are calculated from the results obtained and graphs are
plotted between various parameters such as Nusselt number, friction factor,
pressure drop and pumping power versus Reynolds number. These graphs have
been analyzed and discussed to find out the optimal result for which the heat
exchanger would give the best performance.
INTRODUCTION
A heat exchanger may be defined as an equipment which transfers the energy from a hot
fluid to a cold fluid, with maximum rate and minimum investment and running cost. The
rate of transfer of heat depends on the conductivity of the dividing wall and convective
heat transfer coefficient between the wall and fluids. The heat transfer rate also varies
depending on the boundary conditions such as adiabatic or insulated wall conditions.
Some examples of heat exchangers are:
• Intercoolers and pre heaters;
• Condensers and boilers in refrigeration units;
• Condensers and boilers in steam plant;
• Regenerators; v. Oil coolers and heat engines;
• Automobile radiators etc.
LITRATURE REVIEW
• A wide range of researches are already done to study the flow characteristics and heat transfer
in helical heat exchangers. The enhancement of the heat transfer in the helically coiled tubes is
due to the centrifugal forces. A secondary flow field is produced due to the curvature of the tube
with a circulatory motion, which causes the fluid particles to move towards the core region of the
tube. The secondary flow enhances heat transfer rates by reducing the temperature gradient
across the cross-section of the tube. Thus there is an additional convective heat transfer
mechanism occurs, perpendicular to the main flow, which does not exist in straight tube heat
exchangers.[1]
• K.S. Bharuka, D.Y. Kasture studied the characteristics of heat transfer in a double pipe helical
heat exchanger and found that the overall heat transfer coefficients increases with increasing
inner Dean number. However, this increase is a function of the ratio of the mass flow rates.[2]
Vimal Kumar, Burhanuddin Faizee, Monisha Mridha and K.D.P. Nigam conducted an experiment
on tube-in-tube heat exchanger and observed that with the increase in operating pressure in the
inner tube, the overall heat transfer coefficient increases and the friction factor value in the
inner-coiled tube was in agreement with the literature data.
• N. Ghorbani , H. Taherian , M. Gorji , H. Mirgolbabaei conducted a practical experiment on
a vertical helically coiled heat exchanger and found that the coil surface area was the
most influential geometrical parameter on the heat transfer coefficient and effect of tube
diameter is almost negligible on overall heat transfer coefficient.[9] Rahul Kharat, Nitin
Bhardwaj, R.S. Jha experimented on the effect of various geometric parameters on a
concentric helical coil heat exchanger. They plotted the graph between heat transfer
coefficient versus tube diameter and coil gap and found that two most important design
parameters are coil gap and tube diameter.[8]
• J. S. Jayakumar conducted an experiment on helically coiled heat exchangers using CFD
and found that the use of constant values for the heat transfer and thermal properties of
the fluid resulted in inaccurate heat transfer coefficients. Based on the analysis results he
developed a correlation in order to evaluate the heat transfer coefficient of the coil. In
this study, analysis was done for both the constant wall temperature and constant wall
heat flux boundary conditions. The Nusselt numbers that were obtained were found to be
highest on the outer coil and lowest in the inner side. The coil parameters like the
diameters of the pipes, the Pitch Circle Diameters have significant effect on the heat
transfer and the effect of the pitch is negligible. [10]
• Timothy J. Rennie studied the heat transfer characteristics for a double pipe helical heat
exchanger for both counter and parallel flow with both the boundary conditions of
constant heat flux and constant wall temperature. The results from the simulations
were within the range of the pre-obtained results. The overall heat transfer coefficients
were determined for dean numbers ranging from 38 to 350. He observed that the
overall heat transfer coefficients varied directly with the inner dean number but the
fluid flow conditions in the outer pipe had a major contribution on the overall heat
transfer coefficient. So, he concluded that during the design of a double pipe helical
heat exchanger, the design of the outer pipe should be given the highest priority in
order to get a better overall heat transfer coefficient.
• J. S. Jayakumar, S. M. Mahajani, J. C. Mandal, Rohidas Bhoi studied the constant thermal
and transport properties of the heat transfer medium and their effect on the prediction
of heat transfer coefficients. Arbitrary boundary conditions were not applicable for the
determination of heat transfer for a fluid-to-fluid heat exchanger. An experimental
setup was made for studying the heat transfer and also CFD was used for the
simulation of the heat transfer. The CFD simulation results were reasonably well within
the range of the experimental results. Based on both the experimental and simulation
HELICAL TUBE
Helical tubes are universally used in chemical reactors, ocean
engineering, heat exchangers, piping system and many other
engineering applications. It has been long recognized that heat
transfer characteristic of helical tubes is much better than the
straight ones because of the occurrence of secondary fluid flow
in planes normal to the main flow inside the helical structure.
Helical tubes show great performance in heat transfer
enhancement, while the uniform curvature of spiral structure is
inconvenient in pipe installation in heat exchangers. It has
been widely reported in literature that heat transfer rates in
helical coils are higher as compared to those in straight tubes.
Due to the compact structure and high heat transfer
coefficient, helical coil heat exchangers find extensive use in
industrial applications such as power generation, nuclear
industry, process plants, heat recovery systems, refrigeration,
food industry, etc.
OPERATION FEATURES
• Fully drainable inner and outer coil
• Spiral wound for maximum counter flow
efficiency
• Spiral wound for maximum parallel flow
efficiency
• Constant fluid velocity
• No dead spots or crevices
• Fluids & slurries
• Highly resistant to thermal and hydraulic
shock
 METHODOLOGY
Methodology adopted
• Here the analysis is done using ANSYS 22
software.

Analysis procedure
• Geometrical modelling
• Meshing
• Solution:
o Material selection
o Defining zones
o Boundary conditions
o Solution methods
o Solution initialization
o Iteration
o Plot results and contours
o Calculation of various parameters
GEOMETRICAL MODELLING

First the geometry of the model is created in ANSYS workbench. Fluid flow (fluent) module is
selected from the workbench. The design modeler opens as a new window when the geometry is
double clicked.
• Sketching: Using sketching option three concentric circles are created in XY-plane(diameters of
circles are 6mm, 7mm and 13mm) in three different sketches. A straight line is also created in
sketch 4 along the height of the helical tube at the center.
• Sweep: Then the three circles were swept about the central axis with pitch 40 mm and number of
turns is 1.5. At first the mean coil diameter is 50mm and then it is varied for different values of
D/d. Then using boolean operation the overlapping volumes are subtracted and respective phases
were chosen.
• Merging: The model has 3 parts and 3bodies after sweep operation. So, all the 3 parts are
selected using control and merged into 1 part. At the end it will have 1 part and 3 bodies. The 3
bodies are named as follows:
1. Inner fluid (fluid)
2. Thickness volume (solid)
3. Outer fluid (fluid)
• Meshing: In free meshing a relatively coarser mesh is
generated. It contains both tetrahedral and hexahedral
cells having triangular and quadrilateral faces at the
boundaries. Later, a fine mesh is generated using edge
sizing. In this, the edges and regions of high pressure and
temperature gradients are finely meshed.
• Creating named sections: Different sections are named
according to their use such as cold_inlet, cold_outlet,
hot_inlet, hot_outlet etc. Now the project was updated,
saved and meshing window was closed. After that the
ANSYS Fluent launcher was opened double clicking on
setup. The dimension was set as 3D, option as Double
Precision and then OK. The Fluent window was opened.
• Materials: Water-liquid as fluid and copper as solid was selected from the
fluent database by clicking change/create.
• Cell zone conditions: Different parts were assigned as solid or fluid
accordingly.
• Convergence criteria: The convergence criteria were set to 10-5 for the
three velocity components and continuity, 10-8 for energy and 10-4 for
turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation energy.
SOLUTION..
• Problem Setup: The mesh was checked. The analysis type was changed to
Pressure Based type and the velocity formulation was changed to absolute. Time
was changed to steady state.
• Models: Energy was set ON position. And viscous model was selected as “k-ε
model (2 equation).
• Materials: Water-liquid as fluid and copper as solid was selected from the fluent
database by clicking change/create.
• Cell zone conditions: Different parts were assigned as solid or fluid
accordingly.
MATERIAL PROPERTIES
• Boundary conditions:
Different boundary conditions were applied for different zones. Since
it is a tube-in-tube heat exchanger, there are two inlets and two
outlets. The inlets were defined as velocity inlets and outlets were
defined as pressure outlets. The inlet velocity of the cold fluid was
kept constant i.e. 2.5m/s, whereas velocity of hot fluid was varied
from 1m/s to 2m/s for different experiments. The outlet pressures
were kept default i.e. atmospheric pressure. The hot fluid
temperature at inlet was 650 C and cold fluid inlet temperature was
kept 230 C. The other wall conditions were defined accordingly. The
surrounding air temperature was kept 270 C and convective heat transfer
coefficient between outer wall and surrounding was 2500W/m2 K.
BOUNDRY CONDITIONS
SOLUTION
METHODS
The solution methods were set as follows:
1. Scheme = Simplc
2. Gradient = Least Square Cell Based
3. Pressure = linear
4. Momentum = Second Order Upwind
5. Turbulent Kinetic Energy = Second Order
Upwind
6. Turbulent Dissipation Rate = Second Order
Upwind
7. Energy= power law
• Solution Control and Initialization: Under relaxation factors the
parameters are:

• All the conditions were left as default. Then the “hot_inlet” was
selected from the compute from drop down list and then the
solution was initialized.
• Convergence criteria: The convergence criteria were set to 10-5
for the three velocity components and continuity, 10-8 for energy
and 10-4 for turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation energy.
• Run calculation: The number of iterations was set to 1000 with step
size 1. Then the calculation was started and it continued till the
results converged.
Various contours were plotted and different parameters were calculated
such as weighted average of total temperatures at out let and inner
wall, total wall flux, pressure drop across the hot fluid inlet and outlet to
• Grid independence
calculate pumping power.test This test is carried out to find out the optimum
grid size of a model at which the parameters don’t change with
varying grid size in mesh.
• if the solution changes as the grid is refined. When the grid is fine
enough the solution does not change, so that the solution is 'grid
independent'. This gives reducing the discretization error inherent in
CFD.
• Grid independent test for different geometries of the heat exchangers are shown
below
REFERACE VALUES
CONCLUSION
This work investigates the heat transfer and flow characteristics of a tube-in-tube helical
heat exchanger for counter flow using CFD methodology. The effect of mass flow rate in
the inner tube and curvature ratio are studied and the various conclusions drawn are:
 Nusselt depends on the curvature ratio, i.e. the ratio of coil diameter to inner tube diameter.

 For turbulent flow in the pipe, friction factor decreases with increasing Reynolds number(Re) whereas heat
transfer rate increases with Re.
 For more heat transfer rate, higher curvature ratio should be preferred irrespective of the power low.

 From the velocity and temperature contours it can be observed that the velocity is higher towards the outer
side of the coil whereas temperature is higher towards inner side of coil.nsfer rate, higher curvature ratio
should be preferred irrespective of the power low.
 The heat transfer performance of a helical tube heat exchanger is more than that of a straight tube heat
exchanger.
FUTURE SCOPE

Future works required to be carried out for further improvement of helical heat
exchangers are:
 CFD analysis and optimization of the curvature ratio using Dean number and Colburn
factor for boundary conditions of constant wall temperature and constant wall heat flux
for both laminar and turbulent flow.
 To analyze the results and optimize the heat transfer rate with varying the pitch of the
helical coil.
REFERENCES
1. Darvid, A.N., Smith, K.A., Merril, E.W. and Brain, P.L.T, 1971, Effect of secondary fluid
motion on laminar flow heat transfer in helically coiled tubes. AICHE Journal, 17, 1142–
1222.
2. 2. K.S. Bharuka, D.Y. Kasture, 1984, Flow through a helically coiled annulus, Applied
Science Research, 41, 55–67.
3. 3. Timothy John Rennie, 2004, Numerical And Experimental Studies of a Double pipe
Helical Heat Exchanger, Dept. of Bio-resource Engg. McGill University, Montreal.
4. 4. Vimal Kumar, Supreet Saini, Manish Sharma, K.D.P. Nigam, 2006, Pressure drop and
heat transfer study in tube-in-tube helical heat exchanger , Chemical Engineering
Science, 61, 4403 – 4416.
5. 5. Rennie, T.J. and Raghavan, V.G.S., 2006, Numerical studies of a doublepipe helical
heat exchanger. Appl Thermal Eng, 26, 1266–1273.
6. Vimal Kumar, Burhanuddin Faizee, Monisha Mridha, K.D.P. Nigam, 2007, Numerical
studies of a tube-in-tube helically coiled heat exchanger, Chemical Engineering and
Processing, 47, 2287–2295.
7. J.S. Jayakumar, S.M. Mahajani, J.C. Mandal, P.K. Vijayan, and Rohidas Bhoi, 2008,
Experimental and CFD estimation of heat transfer in helically coiled heat exchangers ,
Chemical Engg Research and Design, 221-232.
8. Rahul Kharat, Nitin Bhardwaj, R.S. Jha, 2009, Development of heat transfer coefficient
correlation for concentric helical coil heat exchanger, International Journal of Thermal
Sciences, 48, 2300–2308.
9. N. Ghorbani a, H. Taherian b, M. Gorji c, H. Mirgolbabaei d, 2010, Experimental study of
mixed convection heat transfer in vertical helically coiled tube heat exchangers ,
Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 34, 900–905.
10. J. S. Jayakumar, Helically Coiled Heat Exchangers, Heat Exchangers – Basics Design
Applications, 12. 11. Rajput R.K., 2011, Heat and Mass Transfer, S. Chand & Company ltd.,
pp.563, chap.10
THANK YOU!!