The Optimum Plate to Plate Spacing for Maximum Heat Transfer Rate from a Flat Plate Type Heat Exchanger

摘要

The present paper is a study on the optimum plate to plate spacing for maximum heat transfer rate from a flat plate type heat exchanger. The heat exchanger consists of a number of parallel flat plates. The working fluids are flowed at the same operational conditions, either fixed pressure head or fixed fan power input. Parallel and counter flow directions of the working fluids were considered. While the volume of the heat exchanger is kept constant, plate number was varied. Hence, the spacing between plates as well as heat transfer rate will vary and there exists a maximum heat transfer rate. The objective of this paper is to seek the optimum plate to plate spacing for maximum heat transfer rate. In order to solve the problem, analytical and numerical solutions have been carried out. In the analytical solution, the correlations of the optimum plate to plate spacing as a function of the non-dimensional parameters were developed. Furthermore, the numerical simulation is carried out to evaluate the correlations. The results show that the optimum plate to plate spacing for a counter flow heat exchanger is smaller than parallel flow ones. On the other hand, the maximum heat transfer rate for a counter flow heat exchanger is bigger than parallel flow ones.