Fouling effect of geothermal water scale on heat transfer around a tube in a bank

Scales deposited onto the heating surfaces of heat exchangers seriously reduce the heat transfer performance and also increase the hydrodynamic drag. Accordingly, fouling is an important problem in the design and operation of heat exchangers. Present paper investigates the heat transfer around in-line four circular cylinders on which geothermal water scales are uniformly distributed. The cylinders are settled in tandem with equal distance between neighbouring cylinders and only the test cylinder is heated under the condition of constant heat flux. It is found that the heat transfer of the in-line tube banks greatly varies with the fouling of geothermal water scale, especially its scale height. Further, the local and average Nusselt numbers strongly depend upon the cylinder spacing and the Reynolds number.