Study on the heat transfer and flow characteristics in a spiral-coil tube

Abstract

In the present study, numerical and experimental results of the heat transfer and flow characteristics of the horizontal spiral-coil tube are investigated. The spiral-coil tube is fabricated by bending a 8.00. mm diameter straight copper tube into a spiral-coil of five turns. The innermost and outermost diameters of the spiral-coil are 270.00 and 406.00. mm, respectively. Hot and cold water are used as working fluids. The k-ε standard two-equation turbulence model is applied to simulate the turbulent flow and heat transfer characteristics. The main governing equations are solved by a finite volume method with an unstructured nonuniform grid system. Experiments are performed to obtain the heat transfer and flow characteristics for verifying the numerical results. Reasonable agreement is obtained from the comparison between the results from the experiment and those obtained from the model. In addition, the Nusselt number and pressure drop per unit length obtained from the spiral-coil tube are 1.49 and 1.50 times higher than those from the straight tube, respectively. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.