Experimental investigation on heat transfer characteristics of heat exchanger with bubble fin assistance

ABSTRACT

Heat transfer area per unit volume (m²/m³) of heat exchangers decides the size of the heat exchangers, over the period of years heat exchangers have undergone numerous development in this aspect. One such attractive design is plate heat exchanger which is very compact and has high thermal effectiveness, whereas the flow nature of fluid through this type of heat exchangers is complex. The most common type of plate heat exchanger is chevron type which suffers from large pressure drop (Δp) at higher heat transfer rates, to overcome this problem bubble finned heat exchangers are designed. In this paper the performance of bubble finned heat exchanger is studied with single phase fluid flow condition. The comparative study of finned and no fin configuration shows that the former has 1.8 times higher rate of heat transfer at lower value of Reynold’s number, further the flow remains laminar hence the Δp is minimum.