A Study on 3D Numerical Model for Plate Heat Exchanger

Abstract Generally, heat exchanger is a thermodynamic system which has been employed to transfer thermal energy between two or more fluids, between a solid surface and a fluid, or between solid particulates and a fluid, at different temperatures and in thermal contact. Recently, the growing requirements to save energy and reduce overall environmental impacts has placed greater emphasis on the use of heat exchangers with better thermal efficiency. Therefore, the plate-type heat exchanger that uses metal plates to transfer heat between two fluids has a major advantage over a conventional heat exchanger in which the fluids are exposed to a much larger surface area because the fluids spread out over the plates. However, fouling with the flow of fluid for a long period occurs on the plate surface. So, it might be necessary to carry out numerical simulation for the hot and cold fluid flow model which can reflect the real situation of hot and cold fluid heat transfer. In this paper, plate-type heat exchanger is simulated which based on the computational fluid dynamics method. The calculated model is established for fluid flow and heat transfer in cold and hot flow channels of a chevron-type plate-type heat exchanger. The flow pattern and heat transfer effect of the cold and hot fluids are analyzed under the water-to-water heat transfer by using the simulation software, ANSYS. At the same time, 3D numerical model of the local computation domains for the plate-type heat exchanger are simulated at different parameters which included the corrugated angle, corrugated depth and corrugated pitch. With the development of CFD(Computational Fluid Dynamics) technology, numerical guidance can be provided for the improvement of plate-type heat exchanger and optimization of the design.