Enhancing heat transfer surface are used in many engineering applications such as heat exchanger, air conditioning, chemical reactor and refrigeration systems, hence many techniques have been investigated on enhancement of heat transfer rate and decrease the size and cost of the involving equipment especially in heat exchangers. One of the most important techniques used are passive heat transfer technique. These techniques when adopted in Heat exchanger proved that the overall thermal performance improved significantly. This paper reviews experimental and numerical works taken by researchers on this technique since 2004 such as twisted tape, wire coil, swirl flow generator,… etc. to enhance the thermal efficiency in heat exchangers and useful to designers implementing passive augmentation techniques in heat exchange. The authors found that variously developed twisted tape inserts are popular researched and used to strengthen the heat transfer efficiency for heat exchangers. The other techniques used for specific work environments are studied in this paper. Twisted tape inserts perform better in laminar flow than turbulent flow. However, the other several passive techniques such as ribs, conical nozzle, and conical ring, etc. are generally more efficient in the turbulent flow than in the laminar flow.

A comprehensive review on passive heat transfer enhancements in pipe exchangers

Economic reasons (material and energy saving) leads to make efforts for making more efficient heat exchange. The heat transfer enhancement techniques are widely used in many applications in the heating process to make possible reduction in weight and size or enhance the performance of heat exchangers. These techniques are classified as active and passive techniques. The active technique required external power while the passive technique does not need any external power. The passive techniques are valuable compared with the active techniques because the swirl inserts manufacturing process is simple and can be easily employed in an existing heat exchanger. Insertion of swirl flow devices enhance the convective heat transfer by making swirl into the bulk flow and disrupting the boundary layer at the tube surface due to repeated changes in the surface geometry. An effort has been made in this paper to carry out an extensive literature review of various turbulators (coiled tubes, extended surfaces (fin, louvered strip, winglet), rough surfaces (Corrugated tube, Rib) and swirl flow devices such as twisted tape, conical ring, snail entry turbulator, vortex rings, coiled wire) for enhancing heat transfer in heat exchangers. It can be concluded that wire coil gives better overall performance if the pressure drop penalty is considered. The use of coiled square wire turbulators leads to a considerable increase in heat transfer and friction loss over those of a smooth wall tube.

Review of heat transfer enhancement methods: Focus on passive methods using swirl flow devices

Heat transfer enhancement is an important matter of concern for energy conservation and also beneficial from economic point of view. The use of passive devices like twisted tapes, roughness elements, wires inserts etc. are effective methods of heat transfer augmentation. Many research studies on different types of twisted tapes geometries to increase heat transfer rate have been carried out. Also, several correlations were developed to determine heat transfer and friction factor for twisted tape inserts. In the present study, a review on work done in the area of heat transfer augmentation using twisted tapes has been carried out. Previous experimental and numerical studies on various types of twisted tapes (based on the literature survey) were discussed. These studies reveal that the future research in the area of twisted tapes will bring more development in the heat exchanger systems. The optimum shape for twisted tapes can also be developed based on maximisation of heat transfer and minimisation of friction factor regarding fluid used in the system.

Heat transfer augmentation using twisted tape inserts: A review

Investigation of solar collector system with turbulator considering hybrid nanoparticles

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The heat transfer enhancement techniques and their Thermal Performance Factor

The present work shows the results obtained from experimental investigations of the augmentation of turbulent flow heat transfer in a horizontal tube by means of varying width twisted tape inserts with air as the working fluid. In order to reduce excessive pressure drops associated with full width twisted tape inserts, with less corresponding reduction in heat transfer coefficients, reduced width twisted tapes of widths ranging from 10 mm to 22 mm, which are lower than the tube inside diameter of 27.5 mm are used. Experiments were carried out for plain tube with/without twisted tape insert at constant wall heat flux and different mass flow rates. The twisted tapes are of three different twist ratios (3, 4 and 5) each with five different widths (26-full width, 22, 18, 14 and 10 mm) respectively. The Reynolds number varied from 6000 to 13500. Both heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop are calculated and the results are compared with those of plain tube. It was found that the enhancement of heat transfer with twisted tape inserts as compared to plain tube varied from 36 to 48% for full width (26mm) and 33 to 39% for reduced width (22 mm) inserts. Correlations are developed for friction factors and Nusselt numbers for a fully developed turbulent swirl flow, which are applicable to full width as well as reduced width twisted tapes, using a modified twist ratio as pitch to width ratio of the tape. 

International Journal of Engineering, Science and Technology, Vol. 2, No. 6, 2010, pp. 107-118

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L Shyam Sunder

Papers

Enhancement of heat transfer using varying width twisted tape inserts