Research on the Thermal Hydraulic Performance and Entropy Generation Characteristics of Finned Tube Heat Exchanger with Streamline Tube

Thermal hydraulic performance of the fin-and-tube heat exchanger is presented in this paper. The purpose of this investigation was to investigate the heat transfer mechanism and flow characteristics in the finned tube heat exchanger with streamline tube. The streamline tube in this paper had the streamline cross section which was composed of a semicircle and a half diamond. Three-dimensional numerical simulation was presented and validated by the experiment and the other numerical simulation from public articles. The present simulation had good agreement with the experimental results. The difference of the j factor and f factor between the experimental results and present simulation results by k-epsilon-enhance model was less than 7.6%. The geometrical parameters were considered as every single variable to investigate the thermal hydraulic performance. The results showed that smaller transversal and larger tube pitch provided greater compactness and better thermal performance. Moreover, a larger angle was not only beneficial to enhance the thermal performance, but also helpful to improve the overall performance. Secondly, the effects of angle on the heat transfer performance and fluid flow characteristics were investigated as the perimeter kept constant. It was shown that the overall performance of the streamline tube was better than the circular tube. Lastly, the entropy generation including frictional entropy generation and the thermal entropy generation were analyzed. It can be concluded that by using the streamline tube, the wake region can be obviously reduced, and thermal performance can be improved.