Analysis of the thermal and flow performance of a finned coil heat exchanger using a full-scale CFD model and its experimental verification

Abstract

Heat exchangers, depending on their intended use, vary in terms of their design and principle of operation. Regardless of the heat transfer media, research is carried-out to improve the efficiency of the exchangers and reduce pressure losses. Numerical simulations with the use of CFD software are often used to optimize this type of devices. However, modelling full-size devices, is associated with a large number of computational cells in the numerical model and, consequently, a long simulation time or the inability to perform the analysis for the originally prepared model. The article presents the results of numerical and experimental analyzes of the finned coil heat exchanger. Thanks to the simplifications described in the article, the number of numerical grid elements was reduced from approx. 200 million to approx. 13 million, which made it possible to carry out calculations on the existing computing station. The model was verified on an experimental stand, and the maximum relative error of pressure drop did not exceed 5% between the simulation and the experiment. Presented assumptions and procedures can be a guide in the analysis of related devices characterized by numerical models with a large number of small elements.