AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE PORT TO CHANNEL FLOW AND PRESSURE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SMALLER AND LARGER PLATE PACKAGE HEAT EXCHANGERS

摘要

An experimental investigation has been carried out to find the flow and the pressure difference across the port to channel in plate heat exchangers for a wide range of Reynolds number, 1000 to 17000. In the present study, low corrugation angle plates have been used for different number of channels, namely, 20 and 80. Water has been used as working fluid for both hot and cold fluid sides. The pressure probes are inserted through the plate gasket into both the inlet and exit ports of the channel. The pressure drop is recorded at the first, middle and last channels for each plate package of the heat exchanger. Also, the overall pressure drop has been measured for various flow rates. This overall pressure drop is a function of the flow rate, the cross-sectional area ratio of channel to port and number of channels per fluid. The results indicated that the flow maldistribution increases with increasing overall pressure drop in the plate heat exchangers. The experimental results are verified with Bassiouny and Martin (1984a) analytical results.