Heat transfer in helical coil heat exchanger:An experimental parametric study

Helical coil heat exchangers are widely used in a variety of industry applications such as refrigerationsystems, process plants and heat recovery. In this study, the effect of Reynolds number and theoperating temperature on heat transfer coefficients and pressure drop for laminar flow conditions wasinvestigated. Experiments were carried out in a shell and tube heat exchanger with a copper coiledpipe (4 mm ID, length of 1.7 m and coil pitch of 7.5 mm) in the temperature range from 243 to 273 K.Air – propan-2-ol vapor mixture and coolant (methylsilicone oil) flowed inside and around the coil,respectively. The fluid flow in the shell-side was kept constant, while in the coil it was varied from 6.6to 26.6 m/s (the Reynolds number below the critical value of 7600). Results showed that the helicalpipe provided higher heat transfer performance than a straight pipe with the same dimensions. Theconvective coefficients were determined using the Wilson method. The values for the coiled pipe werein the range of 3–40 W/m2·K. They increased with increasing the gas flow rate and decreasing thecoolant temperature