Shell-side heat transfer and pressure drop of shell-and-tube heat exchangers with overlap helical baffles

The shell-side pressure drop and heat transfer performance of shell-and-tube heat exchangers with overlap helical baffles were studied experimentally in comparison with those of traditional segmental baffles heat exchangers. The influences of inserted dummy tubes and helical angles were investigated. It was found that the presence of dummy tubes deteriorated the overall heat transfer performance of heat exchangers with helical baffles. The shell-side pressure drop and heat transfer coefficient decreased with the increase of helical angle at identical shell-side mass flow rate, and both of them were lower than those of the corresponding segmental-baffle heat exchangers. The shell-side heat transfer coefficients for the helical-baffle heat exchangers were higher than those of the segmental-baffle heat exchangers at the identical shell-side pressure drop.