The influence of tube bundle geometry on cross-flow boiling heat transfer and pressure drop

https://doi.org/10.1016/0894-1777(89)90008-3Get rights and content

Abstract

An experimental investigation was performed to compare the boiling heat transfer coefficients and two-phase pressure drops from a square inline and a staggered tube bundle having the same tube pitch-to-diameter ratio (P/D = 1.30) and from two square inline tube bundles having different pitch-to-diameter ratios (P/D = 1.30 and 1.70). Except at the highest heat fluxes the heat transfer coefficients generally were higher in the staggered tube bundle than in the inline tube bundle and higher in the larger P/D tube bundle than in the smaller. As the heat flux increased, the differences decreased. The differences were attributed to the tradeoff between nucleation and convection. The staggered tube bundle had higher pressure drops than the inline bundle except at low mass velocities; the larger pressure drop in the staggered bundle was attributed to the combination of a larger void fraction and a larger friction multiplier, with the frictional component dominating at higher mass velocities. Comparing the inline tube bundle pressure drops, it was concluded that the larger P/D bundle had a larger void fraction than the smaller P/D tube bundle; no conclusions could be drawn regarding the relative magnitude of the two-phase fraction multiplier.

References (21)

  • J.W. Palen et al.

    Refinery Kettle Reboilers—Proposed Method for Design and Optimization

    Chem. Eng. Prog.

    (1962)
  • J.W. Palen et al.

    New Way to Design Kettle and Internal Reboilers

  • J.W. Palen et al.

    Characteristics of Boiling Outside Large-Scale Horizontal Multitube Bundles

    AIChE Symp. Ser. 118

    (1972)
  • R.T. Montgomery et al.

    A Study of Nucleate Boiling of Hydrocarbons from Multiple Tube Arrays

  • R. Wallner

    Boiling Heat Transfer on Flooded Sheall and Tube Evaporators

  • N.M. Mednikova

    Concerning the Boiling of Freon-22 and 502 on a Tube Bundle at Low Temperatures

    Heat Transfer—Sov. Res.

    (1973)
  • K.I. Nakajima et al.

    An experimental Study on the Performance of a Flooded Type Evaporator

    Heat Transfer—Jap. Res.

    (1975)
  • K.I. Nakajima

    Boiling Heat Transfer Outside Horizontal Multitube Bundles

    Heat Transfer—Jap. Res.

    (1978)
  • Y. Fujita et al.

    Nucleate Boiling Heat Transfer on Horizontal Tubes in Bundles

  • L.S. Leong et al.

    Heat Transfer Coefficients in a Reboiler Tube Bundle

    Chem. Eng.

    (1979)
There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (11)

  • Numerical investigation on the thermal-hydraulic performance of separated structure steam generator with different tube arrangements

    2022, Annals of Nuclear Energy
    Citation Excerpt :

    Schrage et al. (1988) found that the variation of the two-phase friction multiplier is different under different flow patterns for air-water mixtures flow across the square in-line tube bundle. Jensen et al. (1989) investigated the heat transfer performance and pressure drop of boiling flow across both staggered and in-line tube bundle using R113. The heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and pressure drop were generally larger in the staggered tube bundle than in the in-line tube bundle.

  • A critical review of parameters governing the boiling characteristics of tube bundle on shell side of two-phase shell and tube heat exchangers

    2022, Thermal Science and Engineering Progress
    Citation Excerpt :

    The performance of the inclined tube bundle is the lowest. Jensen et al. [46] reported that at a constant mass flux the HTC performance was similar at high heat fluxes and low mass flux for two different geometries, staggered and inline. However, at low heat flux and higher mass flux the staggered tube bundle performance was greater with higher HTC.

  • Convective boiling of R-123 on enhanced-tube bundles

    2019, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer
    Citation Excerpt :

    Ultimately, the presented void fraction and two-phase friction multiplier predicted the bundle pressure drop for R-113. Jensen et al. [16] studied the effect of tube geometry on a smooth tube bundle testing in-line and staggered tube bundles with P/D 1.3 and 1.7 for each tube bundle. They reported that at low heat flux, the larger tube pitch showed a higher heat transfer coefficient, while at medium heat flux, the heat transfer coefficient showed insignificant dependency on tube pitch.

  • Experimental investigation on pressure drop characteristics of two-phase hydrocarbon mixtures flow in the shell side of LNG spiral wound heat exchangers

    2017, Applied Thermal Engineering
    Citation Excerpt :

    The existing studies on two-phase pressure drop characteristics across tube bundles cover the working fluids of air/water mixtures [9–14], nitrogen/water mixtures [15], R113 [16], R134a, R410A, R507A [17], and R236fa [18,19], but there is no study for hydrocarbon mixtures [20]. These studies show that, the two-phase pressure drop decreases with increasing mass velocity in bubbly flow pattern, and increases with increasing mass velocity in spray and slug flow patterns [16]; an increment of tube pitches leads to an increase of the two-phase frictional pressure drop across inline tube bundles, but has no effect on the frictional pressure drop across staggered tube bundles [21–24]; an increasing mass velocity results in an increase of downward flow pressure drop when the Martinelli parameter (Xtt) is larger than 0.2, but has no impact when the Martinelli parameter (Xtt) less than 0.2 [11]. However, in the shell side of an LNG SWHE, the working fluids are hydrocarbon mixtures, and the thermophysical properties are much different from those of non-hydrocarbon refrigerants, which may lead to different pressure drop characteristics from those in the existing research.

  • Convective boiling of R-134a on enhanced-tube bundles

    2016, International Journal of Refrigeration
View all citing articles on Scopus

Present address: Modine Manufacturing, Co., 1500 Dekoven Avenue, Racine, Wisconsin 53401.

View full text