ARTICLE:

• HEAT TRANSFER ENHANCEMENT AND FOULING MITIGATION POTENTIAL DUE TO DIMPLING THE CONVECTIVE SURFACES  download article

Yaroslav Chudnovsky
Gas Technology Institute, End Use Solutions/Process Heating, 1700 South Mount Prospect Road, Des Plaines, IL 60018, U.S.A.

A. Kozlov
Gas Technology Institute, 1700 South Mount Prospect Road, Des Plaines, IL 60018, U.S.A.

ABSTRACT

Most of the existing heat transfer enhancement techniques effectively increase heat transfer; however, this increase is invariably accompanied by an associated increase in pressure drop as well as, for "dirty" industrial flows, also increases fouling of the heat transfer surfaces. Authors have experimentally evaluated an approach that increases heat transfer rate without any significant increase (or even reduction in some cases) in pressure drop for the convective passages of typical industrial process heating equipment. The approach involves the use of three-dimensional profile (dimples) on a heat exchange surface. Cost-effective enhancement occurs due to vortex flow patterns that are generated by cavities. The resulting patterns provide intensive heat and mass transfer between the surface and heating media. Moreover, it was expected the surface dimpling would not increase (or even reduce in some cases) fouling rate due to columnar vortices that are formed in each cavity and would extensively promote evacuation of the deposits away from the dimpled surface. The dimpled surfaces were evaluated versus finned surfaces in laboratory bench-scale as well as field pilot-scale environments.

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HTE-21 pages

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