Compound porous media model for simulation of flat top U-tube compact heat exchanger

• Published in: International journal of heat and mass transfer Vol. 138; pp. 1029 - 1041
• Main Authors: Kim, Jaemin, Sibilli, Thierry, Ha, Man Yeong, Kim, Kuisoon, Yoon, Sang Youl
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.08.2019; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: CFD; Compact heat exchanger; Compound porous media; Computer simulation; Empirical analysis; Heat exchangers; Heat transfer; Mathematical models; Numerical analysis; Porous media; Pressure drop; Tube bundle; Tube heat exchangers; U-tube; U-tube; CFD; Compound porous media; Tube bundle; Pressure drop; Compact heat exchanger; Heat transfer
• ISSN: 0017-9310; 1879-2189
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2019.04.116

•Compound porous media model is proposed to simulate performance of U-tube HX.•The complicated U-tube bundle is divided into three porous media sections.•For each section, porous coefficients are obtained from empirical correlations.•Results of compound porous media approach are in good agreement with test results.•The proposed model shows the ability to correctly model a complex geometry HX. This paper describes a compound porous media model approach for numerical analysis to investigate the aero-thermal performance and characteristics of a flat top U-tube heat exchanger. The heat exchanger was considered as a combination of three sections; vertically straight tube section, bent tube section, and horizontally straight tube section. The porous media coefficients were obtained by using empirical correlations for the pressure drop and heat transfer for each section. The numerical results of the compound porous media model were compared to those of a conjugate heat transfer (CHT) CFD analysis, considering real tube geometry and experiments in order to validate the proposed compound porous media approach. The validation revealed that the proposed approach provides reasonable flow and heat transfer characteristics as well as the overall aero-thermal performance of the flat U-tube heat exchanger, with a considerable reduction of the required computational power.