A Study on the Local Heat Transfer Characteristics for Circular Tubes Using Heat Transfer Promoter

For the successful design of heat exchangers, it is very important to understand local heat transfer phenomena on the circular tube of heat exchangers. In the present study, experiments are performed for single circular tube and tube banks with and without heat transfer promoters. The naphthalene sublimation technique is employed to measure the local mass transfer coefficients, and the measured local mass transfer data are converted to the local heat transfer data using heat and mass transfer analogy. The distribution pattern of local Nusselt numbers on single circular tube with heat transfer promoters is similar to that without the heat transfer promoter, but average Nusselt numbers are greatly increased. In case of tube banks without the heat transfer promoter, the Nusselt numbers are much lower in the first row than those of other rows, but the local heat transfer coefficients on all rows are equalized when the heat transfer promoter is installed.