The Effectiveness of Heat Exchangers with One Shell Pass and Three Tube Passes.
Abstract:
Heat exchangers with one shell pass and n tube passes are often referred to as 1-n exchangers. The heat transfer literature contains many references to studies of 1-n exchangers when n is even but apparently little work has been done with respect to the 1-n exchanger when n is odd. This thesis greatly expands the theoretical study of 1-n exchangers with n being odd. While a completely closed form solution was found to be unfeasible, a polynomial approximation has been developed that yields the effectiveness epsilon of the two possible arrangements of the 1-3 exchanger as a function of the capacity rate ratio R and the number of transfer units N sub tu. It is also shown that the effectiveness of the arrangement with two counterflow and one parallel flow tube side passes exceeds that of some of the 1-n exchangers with n even.