Performances of Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow in the Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger with Novel Sextant Fan Baffles

For the high shell side pressure drop of the traditional segmental baffled heat exchanger, a novel sextant fan baffled heat exchanger was put forward in this paper. The 3-dimensional physical model of the novel sextant fan baffled heat exchanger was built, CFD software was used to obtain detailed shell side fluid flow behavior and heat transfer performances, comparison was also made between the new and the traditional segmental baffled heat exchanger. Results show that the pressure drop of the new sextant fan baffled heat exchanger is about 72.3-74.6% greater than that of the traditional segmental baffled heat exchanger under the import velocity of shell side from 2 to 10 m(3)/h. When the import velocity is low, the difference of heat transfer coefficient between the two heat exchangers is minor, and the comprehensive performance of the new sextant fan baffled heat exchanger is 33.14-65.25% greater than that of the heat exchanger with traditional segmental baffles under various import velocities.