Cross flow and heat transfer of hollow-fiber tube banks with complex distribution patterns and various baffle designs

Abstract The pressure drop and heat transfer of hollow-fiber tube banks with various packing patterns and baffle designs are studied by combining pattern recognition technology and computational fluid dynamics. The fluid passes across the fiber bank. The inlet flow Reynolds number ranges from 20 to 180. The pressure drop and heat transfer coefficients of the contactors are highly correlated to the topological characteristics of the fringe of the fiber bank. A single parameter ψ , which summarizes this information, is calculated using pattern recognition technology. The pressure drop and Nusselt number of a contactor exhibit power law relations with ψ . Interestingly, this phenomenon is independent of the baffle design, which affects only the magnitude of the pressure drop and the heat transfer coefficient. Generally, a higher ψ results in contactors with worse performance. For ψ >  0.6, the wall effect is negligible, and all contactors show similar performance regardless of the fiber pattern. The comprehensive performance parameter ∅ is approximately 0.6 for all contactors with various patterns. An ‘‘insert’’ strategy that is used to reduce ψ is demonstrated. The results show how to optimize the structure of contactor for industrial production.