Experiment on heat transfer performance of helical baffled heat exchanger without short circuit flow

In order to eliminate the shell-side leakage flow in triangle zones, the configuration of helical baffled heat exchanger widely used in industrial processes was improved by using fold baffles. The triangle leakage zone near the joint point between two plain baffles is blocked by the fold baffles, which eliminates the short circuit flow and improves the flow field. The experimental results show that the overall heat transfer coefficient of the heat exchanger increases by 7.9%-9.7%, which effectively improves the heat transfer performance of the helical baffled heat exchanger. Although the shell-side pressure drop correspondingly increases, the increment of the pump power consumption is less than 2 W, which can be ignored compared with the increment of heat exchange. The results of the investigation are valuable to the energy saving optimum design of helical baffled heat exchangers.