Experimental and numerical investigation on shell-side performance of multilayer spiral-wound heat exchangers

Considering extensive applications of multilayer spiral-wound heat exchangers (SWHEs) in industry but insufficient focus on shell-side fluid in SWHEs, an experimental investigation on flow and heat transfer performances in the shell-side of a self-manufacturing SWHE with 3 layers of coil inside the cylinder shell is carried out. Numerical simulation using constant heat flux boundary condition is also performed. The flow and heat transfer characteristics on the shell-side of the multilayer SWHE are obtained, and then relevant empirical correlations of Nu 0.0193·Re^0.816 and f_s = 0.401/Re^0.197 are achieved. The results from CFD method gives visualization of flow and heat field of shell-side in the 3-layer SWHE and provides a reasonable estimation of flow and heat transfer performance.