Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 33 (2009) 203–207

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Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science

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Heat transfer coefficients of shell and coiled tube heat exchangers

M.R. Salimpour *
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan 84156-83111, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In the present study, the heat transfer coefficients of shell and helically coiled tube heat exchangers were
Received 6 February 2007 investigated experimentally. Three heat exchangers with different coil pitches were selected as test sec-
Received in revised form 28 July 2008 tion for both parallel-flow and counter-flow configurations. All the required parameters like inlet and
Accepted 31 July 2008
outlet temperatures of tube-side and shell-side fluids, flow rate of fluids, etc. were measured using appro-
priate instruments. Totally, 75 test runs were performed from which the tube-side and shell-side heat
transfer coefficients were calculated. Empirical correlations were proposed for shell-side and tube-side.
Keywords:
The calculated heat transfer coefficients of tube-side were also compared to the existing correlations
Empirical
Shell and coiled tube
for other boundary conditions and a reasonable agreement was observed.
Heat exchanger Ó 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Experimental
Correlation

1. Introduction Naphon and Wongwises [7] provided a literature review on heat

Heat exchangers are used in a wide variety of applications
including power plants, nuclear reactors, refrigeration and air-
conditioning systems, automotive industries, heat recovery sys-
tems, chemical processing, and food industries [1–3]. Besides
the performance of the heat exchanger being improved, the heat
transfer enhancement enables the size of the heat exchanger to
be considerably decreased. In general, the enhancement tech-
niques can be divided into two groups: active and passive tech-
niques. The active techniques require external forces like fluid
vibration, electric field, and surface vibration. The passive tech-
niques require special surface geometries or fluid additives like
various tube inserts. Both techniques have been widely used to
improve heat transfer performance of heat exchangers. Due to
their compact structure and high heat transfer coefficient, heli-
cally coiled tubes have been introduced as one of the passive heat
transfer enhancement techniques and are widely used in various
industrial applications.
Several studies have indicated that helically coiled tubes are
superior to straight tubes when employed in heat transfer applica-
tions [4,5]. The centrifugal force due to the curvature of the tube
results in the secondary flow development which enhances the
heat transfer rate. This phenomenon can be beneficial especially
in laminar flow regime. Thermal performance and pressure drop
of a shell and helically coiled tube heat exchanger with and with-
out helical crimped fins have been investigated by Naphon [6].
* Tel.: +98 311 391 5210; fax: +98 311 391 2628.
E-mail addresses: salimpour@cc.iut.ac.ir, m_salimpour@yahoo.com.
transfer and flow characteristics of single-phase and two-phase
flow in curved tubes including helically coiled tubes and spirally
coiled tubes.
The majority of the studies related to helically coiled tubes
and heat exchangers have dealt with two major boundary con-
ditions, i.e. constant heat flux and constant wall temperature
[8,9]. However, these boundary conditions are not encountered
in most single-phase heat exchangers. Rennie [10] studied the
double-pipe helical heat exchangers numerically and experimen-
tally neglecting the effect of coiled tube pitch. Though the
boundary condition of his work was different from the conven-
tional boundary conditions of constant wall temperature and
constant heat flux, however, it is obvious that the geometry of
the double-pipe coiled tube heat exchanger is completely differ-
ent from that of shell and coiled tube heat exchanger of the
present work.
Kumar et al. [11] studied a tube-in-tube helically coiled heat ex-
changer for turbulent flow regime numerically.
Numerical investigations were done to understand forced lam-
inar fluid flow in rectangular coiled pipes with circular cross-sec-
tion by Conté and Peng [12]. Their focus was addressed on
exploring the flow pattern and temperature distribution through
the pipe.
One of the most frequent uses of helically coiled tubes is in shell
and coiled tube heat exchangers. Going through the existing liter-
ature, it was revealed that there are a few investigations on the
heat transfer coefficients of this kind of heat exchangers consider-
ing the geometrical effects like coil pitch. Also, this scarcity is more
prominent for shell-side heat transfer coefficients.

0894-1777/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.expthermflusci.2008.07.015
204 M.R. Salimpour / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 33 (2009) 203–207

Nomenclature

A surface of coiled tube, m2 N number of data points

b coil pitch, m Nu Nusselt number
C constant of Eq. (2) Re Reynolds number
Pr Prandtl number, = lCP/k U overall heat transfer coefficient, W/m2 K
Rc curvature radius, m v fluid average velocity, m/s
C1,. . .,C4 unknown constants
d coiled tube diameter, m Greek letters
D shell diameter, m d curvature ratio, = d/2Rc
Dh shell-side hydraulic diameter, m c dimensionless pitch, = b/2pRc
De Dean number, = Re(d/2Rc)0.5 l viscosity, kg/m s
h averaged convective heat transfer coefficient, W/m2 K q density, kg/m3
He Helical number, = De/(1 + c2)0.5
k thermal conductivity, W/m2 K Subscripts
L heat exchanger length, m i inside condition
n exponent in Eq. (2) o outside condition

2. Geometry of shell and coiled tube heat exchanger exchanging system in which a hot water stream flowing inside
the tube-side is cooled by a cold water stream flowing in the
A typical shell and coiled tube heat exchanger is shown in Fig. 1. shell-side. The main parts of the cycle are coiled tube heat ex-
In this figure, d is the diameter of the coiled tube, Rc is the curvature changer (1), centrifugal pump (2), storage tank (3), and
radius of the coil, D is the inner diameter of shell, and b is the coil heater (4).
pitch. The curvature ratio, d, is defined as the coil-to-tube diameter The heat exchangers include a copper coiled tube and an insu-
ratio, d/2Rc, and the non-dimensional pitch, c, is defined as b/2pRc. lated shell. The dimensions of the heat exchangers are depicted
The other four important dimensionless parameters of coiled tube in Table 1. The water of storage tank is heated using an electric
namely, Reynolds number (Rei), Nusselt number (Nui), Dean num- heater. Reaching to a prescribed temperature, pump is started to
ber (De), and Helical number (He) are defined as follow: circulate the hot water in the cycle. A ball valve and a globe valve
Rei ¼ qvi di =l; Nui ¼ hi di =k; are used to control the flow rate of coolant water and hot water,
0:5
respectively. To measure the flow rate of the cold stream a rotame-
De ¼ Rei ðdi =2Rc Þ ; He ¼ De=ð1 þ c2 Þ0:5 ter with the accuracy of 2.78  104 kg/s is installed upstream of
where vi and hi are average velocity and convective heat transfer the heat exchanger while for the hot stream a measuring pot with
coefficient of coiled tube, respectively. the accuracy of 3.3  103 kg/s is used. The inlet and outlet tem-
Shell-side Reynolds number, Reo, and Nusselt number, Nuo, are peratures of hot and cold water were recorded manually using 4
defined as RTD thermocouples inserted in the small holes made in the inlet
Reo ¼ qvo Dh =l; Nuo ¼ ho Dh =k and outlet tubes of each heat exchanger and sealed to prevent
D2 2pRc d2o c1 any leakage. Also, all the pipes and connections between the tem-
where vo, ho and Dh ¼ are average velocity, convective
Dþ2pRc do c1 perature measuring stations and heat exchanger were duly insu-
heat transfer coefficient, and the hydraulic diameter of shell-side, lated. All the temperatures were measured three times with
respectively. accuracy of 0.1 °C in the time steps of 10 min, and the average val-
ues were used for further analysis. Appropriate arrangements were
3. Experimental set-up provided to measure the pressure loss of both tube-side and shell-
side streams. All the tube- and shell-side fluids properties were as-
The schematic diagram of experimental set-up is shown in sessed at the mean temperature of the fluids (average of inlet and
Fig. 2. The set-up is a well instrumented single-phase heat outlet temperatures).

b
2Rc
D

Fig. 1. Schematic view of a typical shell and coiled tube heat exchanger.
 M.R. Salimpour / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 33 (2009) 203–207 205

Fig. 2. Flow diagram of the experimental set-up.

Table 1 related to the inner and outer heat transfer coefficients by the fol-
Characteristic dimensions of shell and coiled tube heat exchangers lowing equation [14]:
Heat exchanger di, mm do, mm D, mm b, mm d L, mm
1 Ao Ao lnðdo =di Þ 1
¼ þ þ ð1Þ
1 9 12 120 17.0 0.113 230 U o Ai hi 2pkL ho
2 12 16 120 21.4 0.157 225
3 12 16 120 26.7 0.157 280 where di and do are inner and outer diameters of the tube, respec-
tively; k is the thermal conductivity of the wall; and L is the length
of the heat exchanger. After calculating the overall heat transfer
coefficients, the only unknown variables in Eq. (1) are the heat
4. Data collection and analysis transfer coefficients. By keeping the mass flow rate in the inner tube
constant, it is then assumed that the inner heat transfer coefficient
The range of operating parameters is given in Table 2. As is seen is constant. The outer heat transfer coefficient is assumed to behave
from this table, a wide range of flow rates both in the tube-side and in the following manner with the fluid velocity in the shell, vo:
shell-side is covered for counter-flow configurations. The tests
were performed for all three coiled tube heat exchangers which re-
ho ¼ Cvno ð2Þ
sulted in a total 75 test runs. Substituting Eq. (2) into Eq. (1), the values for the constant, C, and
Heat transfer coefficients for the shell-side, ho, and for the coiled the exponent, n, were determined through curve fitting. The inner
tube-side, hi, were calculated using ‘‘Wilson plots” as described by and outer heat transfer coefficients could then be calculated. This
Rose [13]. Using Wilson plots, the heat transfer coefficients can be procedure was repeated for each inner flow rate, coil size, and con-
calculated based on the overall temperature difference and the rate figuration. This resulted in 15 Wilson plots, and 15 inner heat trans-
of heat transfer. As there is no need for measuring the tube wall fer coefficients. For each Wilson plot, five outer heat transfer
temperature in this method, it was chosen to avoid the disturbance coefficients were calculated, i.e. totally 75 outer heat transfer coef-
of flow patterns and heat transfer while attempting to measure ficients were calculated.
wall temperatures. In this work, the flow in the coiled tube was The uncertainty analysis was performed by the method pro-
kept constant and the flow in the shell-side was varied for the five posed by Schultz and Cole [15] for all experiments, and it was
different flow rates. The overall heat transfer coefficient can be found that the expected experimental error was within ±8% for
all the runs.

Table 2 5. Results and discussion

Range of operating parameters

Parameters Range Fig. 3 represents the tube-side Nusselt number versus Dean
Tube-side water flow rate 0.016–0.113 kg/s
number for shell and coiled tube heat exchangers with different
Shell-side water flow rate 0.019–0.136 kg/s coil pitches. This figure also illustrates a comparison between the
Tube inlet temperature 33.4–53.2 °C results of this study and the empirical correlations proposed in
Tube outlet temperature 23.5–44.9 °C [8] for boundary conditions of constant heat flux and constant wall
Shell inlet temperature 10.9–19.2 °C
temperature. In this figure, correlations for constant wall tempera-
Shell outlet temperature 14.6–37.3 °C
ture and constant heat flux boundary conditions proposed by
206 M.R. Salimpour / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 33 (2009) 203–207

80 the shell-side Nusselt numbers increase with Reynolds number.

Also, it appears that the increase of coiled tube pitch leads to high-
er values of shell-side Nusselt number. This may be explained as in
70
smaller coil pitches, the coolant water is confined in the space be-
tween the successive coil rounds and a semi-dead zone is formed.
60 As in this region, the flow of shell-side fluid is decelerated; heat
transfer coefficients will be descended. Also, it can be easily seen
that the difference among the coils with different geometries are
50
more severe in high Reynolds number region; i.e. when the shell-
Nui

side Reynolds number is increased choosing the appropriate coiled

40 tube geometry becomes more critical.

30 6. Proposing correlations to predict tube- and shell-sides

coil 1
coil 2
coil 3
ref. 8, case I
20 ref. 8, case II
10
1000 2000 3000 4000
De
Fig. 3. Variation of coiled tube Nusselt number with Dean number.
Manlapaz and Churchill [8] are indicated by case I, and case II and
illustrated by solid lines and dash lines, respectively.
From this figure, it is seen that increasing the coiled tube pitch
will decrease the inner Nusselt number. This matter can be justi-
fied as the higher values of coil pitches correspond to the lower
values of Helical number or loose-coiling conditions. Therefore,
the heat transfer coefficients of these coiled tubes are closer to
those of the straight pipes expectedly. A comparison of the present
data with the previous correlations revealed that when coil pitches
are negligible, in low Dean numbers (De < 3000), the correlation of
constant temperature boundary condition predicts the present
data quite well; however, in high Dean numbers (De > 3000), this
correlation overestimates heat transfer coefficients. Also, the corre-
lation pertained to constant heat flux boundary condition overesti-
mates all the data of the present study.
Fig. 4 represents the variations of shell-side Nusselt number
with shell-side Reynolds number which was calculated based on
hydraulic diameter of the shell. From this figure, it is observed that
Nusselt numbers
As discussed in the previous section, the existing correlations
for estimation of heat transfer coefficients of helical coils with con-
stant temperature boundary condition do not conform to the re-
5000 sults of the present study, thus a new correlation was developed
to predict the inner Nusselt number. Based on the experimental re-
sults, a correlation between the tube-side Nusselt number and
Dean number, Prandtl number, and dimensionless coil pitch is ob-
tained using least square analysis. For this purpose, the following
functional relationship is assumed:
Nui ¼ C 1 DeC 2 Pr C 3 cC 4 ð3Þ
Taking logarithm of Eq. (3), and introducing the data of Nui and the
corresponding De, Pr and c into it, an error function can be obtained
as
EðC 1 ; C 2 ; C 3 ; C 4 Þ
X N n h io 2
¼ lnðNui Þj  ln C 1 þ C 2 ln Dej þ C 3 ln Pr j þ C 4 ln cj ð4Þ
j¼1
Minimizing the above error function using least square regression,
the following correlation was found with average error of 0.91%:
Nui ¼ 0:152De0:431 Pr1:06 c0:277 ð5Þ
Fig. 5 shows the comparison between the predicted Nusselt num-
bers by the proposed correlation, Eq. (5), and the experimental Nus-
selt numbers.

70
70

60
60
predicted Nusselt number

50

50
40
Nuo

40
30

30 20

20 shell 1 10
shell 2
shell 3

0
10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
100 200 300 400 500
experimental Nusselt number
Reo
Fig. 5. Comparison of tube-side experimental Nusselt number with predicted
Fig. 4. Variation of shell-side Nusselt number with Reynolds number. Nusselt number.
 M.R. Salimpour / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 33 (2009) 203–207 207

70 exchangers. Heat exchangers with three different coil pitches were

tested for counter-flow configuration. It was revealed that the
empirical correlation for constant temperature boundary condition
60
is quite in agreement with the present data in low Dean number
region. From the results of the present study, it was found out that
predicted Nusselt number

50 the shell-side heat transfer coefficients of the coils with larger

pitches are higher than those for smaller pitches. Finally, based
on the results of this study, two correlations were developed to
40
predict the inner and outer heat transfer coefficients of the coiled
tube heat exchangers.
30

20
10
0 exchanger, J. Food Eng. 58 (2003) 211–214.
0 10 20 30 40 50
experimental Nusselt number
Fig. 6. Comparison of shell-side experimental Nusselt number with predicted
Nusselt number.
Investigating the literature, no correlation was found to evalu-
ate the shell-side heat transfer coefficients of helically coiled tube
heat exchangers. Therefore, in the present study, one correlation
was developed to predict the shell-side Nusselt number as well.
To predict the shell-side Nusselt numbers of coiled tube heat
exchangers, a similar treatment to the inner Nusselt numbers
was done for the outer Nusselt numbers which led to the following
correlation with average error of 1.19%:
Nuo ¼ 19:64Re0:513
o Pr0:129 c0:938
The comparison between the predicted Nusselt numbers by the
proposed correlation, Eq. (6), and the experimental Nusselt num-
bers, is presented in Fig. 6.
From Figs. 5 and 6, it is evident that the proposed correlations
are in good agreement with the present data.
7. Conclusions
An experimental investigation was carried out to study heat
transfer coefficients of the shell and helically coiled tube heat
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