Computational Analysis and Optimization of Spiral Plate Heat Exchanger

From the past few decade, many manufacturing industries are using heat exchangers for reducing the energy consumption and hence reducing the fuel costs. Most widely used types of heat exchangers in industries are Double Pipe Heat Exchangers and Shell & Tube Heat Exchangers. It is recently that industry people and researchers are becoming more aware of the advantage of using Spiral Heat Exchangers for heat transfer between two different fluids. A Spiral Heat Exchanger is formedby a coiled sheet arrangement with two channels coiled one around the other. The distance between the sheets is kept constant to maintain the area of cross section through out the spiral path of the channels. In this work, flow pattern and heat transfer in a Spiral Heat Exchanger are analyzed using a couterflow model geometry. The results obtained for the fluid flow and heat transfer gives an idea about how we can optimize the flow rate of the fluids thus increasing the efficiency of the heat exchanger.