Simulation of shell and tube heat exchanger

Abstract

This study presents a numerical simulation of a shell and tube heat exchanger using ANSYS software to investigate its thermal and fluid dynamics performance in a power plant setting. The simulation predicts key aspects of the heat exchanger's behaviour, including temperature distribution, fluid flow patterns, pressure drop, and heat transfer rates. A counter-flow configuration is considered, with cold water flowing through the tubes and hot exhaust flue gases flowing through the shell. The ANSYS Fluent Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tool was employed for simulating the heat exchanger, involving geometry creation in Solid Works, meshing, defining physics, applying boundary conditions, configuring solver settings, and post-processing results. Simulation results illustrated the heat exchanger’s performance behaviours such as velocity and pressure flow trajectories, temperature distributions, and pressure cut plots. Also, the results of the simulation were in good agreement with literature values, validating the model's accuracy. Key results include temperature gradients for hot and cold fluids (813 K to 373 K for hot fluid; 288 K to 423 K for cold fluid), heat transfer rate of 4012.8 kW, overall heat transfer coefficient of 16 W/m²K, tube-side heat transfer coefficient of 1986.23 W/m²K, and pressure drops of 5.34 kPa (tube side) and 0.22 kPa (shell side). The study concludes that ANSYS software produces realistic outputs for heat transfer and fluid flow in shell and tube heat exchangers, allowing for model validation and revision before prototype production.