Expt.

HT 310

Plate Heat Exchanger

Aim
1. To determine the overall heat transfer coecient in a plate heat exchanger, 2. To study its scaling dependence on the hot uid ow rate, 3. To determine the laminar turbulent transition, and 4. To suggest a correlation function for this dependence in various regimes (laminar, transition, and turbulent).

Apparatus
The setup employed for this experiment is as follows. 1. A stainless steel plate heat exchanger with a facility to measure inlet and outlet temperature of hot and cold uid with an accuracy of 0.1 C. The plates are planar (not corrugated), There are a total of 10 plates making 11 chambers for the uid transportsix for the cold uid and ve for the hot uid. The total heat transfer area available is equal to that of the number of plates (10). (TASK: Measure the dimensions of the plate heat exchanger) 2. The cold uid used here is water and the hot uid is ethylene glycol. (TASK: Determine the dependence of both the uids propertiesviscosity, thermal conductivity, and specic heatwith temperature in the range 4080 C). 3. A stainless steel insulated tank with a heater to act as a reservoir for the hot uid. 4. Hot uid circulation pump with a speed control potentiometer. 5. Cold uid inlet from the water supply tap. 6. Four temperature sensors at the inlet and outlet points for each of the two uids. The hot-uid inlet thermometer is also a thermostat control, which controls the heater connected to the reservoir by a simple relay mechanism. 7. Rotameters for uid ow measurements. HT 310-1

Procedure
General setup
1. The zero correction of the thermometers are determined by measuring steady the uid inlet and outlet temperature under the following conditions (without switching on the heater). Stationary (Assuming the equipment is at equilibrium, before the start of the experiment, all the thermometers should indicate the same temperature. Any deviation indicates the error of the thermometer/sensor combination) Allow minimal ow of the hot uid ( 25 lph) and measure any temperature dierence (which is more than the above error). If the outlet temperature is greater, it indicates viscous dissipation. Set the pump to maximum capacity ow rate ( 550 lph), and measure the temperature dierence between the outlet and inlet of the hot uid. (TASK: Calculate the Brinkman number Br = u2 /K T , where is the uid viscosity at the mean temperature, u is the velocity of the hot uid one chamber, and K is its thermal conductivity, and T is the temperature increase. Br is a measure of the heating due to viscous dissipation.) 2. Set the temperature of the inlet hot uid in the dual temperature indicator cum controller. The set point should be set around 65 to 75 C. 3. Provide cooling water supply to the plate heat exchanger so that the owrate is between 1315 lpm. This will ensure that the temperature rise is restricted to about 23 C. Keep this ow rate constant throughout the experiment. 4. Connect the 15 A and 5 A plug pins to a stable 230 V A.C. electric supply. Care should be taken to connect these two pins in dierent phases of the power supply. Switch on the heater power supply. 5. Adjust the ow rate of hot uid through the heat exchanger by adjusting the speed of hot uid circulation pump. Note down the ow rate of hot uid as indicated by the rotameter. If during the course of any experiment, the ow rate changes (due to power uctuations, or due to temperature changes), make minor adjustments to the potentiometer (which controls the pump speed) to manually reset the ow rate to the desired set value. This kind of adjustments should be done for all the experiments to follow to ensure that the ow rate is maintained at a constant value.

Determination of characteristic settling time

Adjust the set point temperature to a temperature around T = 60 C. Set the ow rate to an intermediate = 300lph. Through out the measurement make sure the ow rate is at this value. Measure the inlet value, V and outlet temperatures for about 15 minutes at 30 second intervals. Use a graph sheet to plot the variation in temperature. Use this plot to obtain an estimate of the time it takes for the inlet and outlet temperatures to settle down to a constant value or to a constant periodic oscillation. Note down if there is any time lag in the behaviour of the outlet temperature variation with respect to that of the inlet. Both these readings, settling time and time lag, should be used in the main experiment: The readings should be taken down only after the settling time (usually one or two time periods of oscillation) and the outlet temperature after the time lag.

HT 310-2

Determination of the overall heat transfer coecient

1. Set the inlet temperature to a high value ( 70 C). 2. Set the ow rate to the highest possible value. Note down the value and maintain it constant (see above on how to do this). 3. Wait for the predetermined characteristic settling time, and then note down the steady inlet and outlet temperatures of both the uids. 4. Repeat steps from 2 (at constant temperature) for at least 10 dierent ow rates ranging from a maximum of about 550 lph to a minimum of about 25 lph. It is useful to place the interval in the ow rate in a geometric progression (GP), which will give equally spaced data in a logarithmic scale. Note that it is not possible to set the value of the ow rate to arbitrary precision as calculated by the GP. Use a value that is closest to the resolution provided by the ow meter. For example, if the resolution of the ow meter is 40, then approximate 28.73 to 40. For higher ow rates, you can also play around with the value of the spacing in GP to a smaller value (say half of that in the low ow rates) so that there are values for at least 10 ow rates. 5. In order to ensure reproducibility, for a given set of inlet temperature and ow rate, take at least three sets of readings of the stream temperatures. The three sets can be obtained by starting (i) at the highest ow rate and descending to the lowest, (ii) ascending to the highest, and (iii) down again to the lowest.

Theory
The plate heat exchanger normally consists of corrugated plates assembled into a frame. The hot uid ows in one direction in alternating chambers while the cold uid ows in true counter-current ow in the other alternating chambers. A schematic diagram of the ow is shown in Figure 1. The uids are directed into their proper chambers either by a suitable gasket or a weld depending on the type of exchanger chosen. Traditionally, plate and frame exchangers have been used almost exclusively for liquid to liquid heat transfer. The best example is in the dairy industry. Today, many variations of the plate technology have proven useful in applications where a phase change occurs as well. This includes condensing duties as well as vaporization duties. Plate heat exchangers are best known for having overall heat transfer coecients (U -values) in excess of 35 times the U -value in a shell and tube designed for the same service. Plate heat exchanger is an attractive option when more expensive materials of construction can be employed. The signicantly higher U -value results in far less area for a given application. The higher U -values are obtained by inducing turbulence between the plate surfaces. Owing to this they are also known to minimize the fouling.

Heat transfer correlation

In general, the heat transfer correlation for a uid ow past a solid surface is expressed in a dimensionless form Nu = Nu(Re, Pr). (1) where Nu is the non-dimensional heat transfer coecient Nu = h D/k. For a heat transfer in a laminar uid ow past a solid surface, with constant uid properties, the steady state temperature prole is a function only of Re, and Pr. The heat transfer coecient is a function of the temperature prole. Therefore, the above

HT 310-3

Hot In Cold Out Plates External Wall Hot Out Cold In

Figure 1: Schematic diagram of a one pass counter current heat exchanger showing the ow pattern. relationship. This expression is often used in situations where the properties vary with temperature, and for turbulent ows. For fully developed laminar ows (internal ows), we expect the Nusselt number Nu to be constant, however for a developing ow its is expressed as: Nu = C1 Re Pr (2)

The value of 0.4. The value of is found to be around 0.3 for developing laminar ow and around 0.64 for turbulent ow. The transition from laminar to turbulent region occurs between 10 Re 100 for corrugated plates. It can be expected to be higher for plain plates. The heat transfer coecient appearing in the Nusselt number can be calculated from the overall heat transfer coecient U , which is given by 1 1 x 1 = + + (3) U hh Kp hc where, hh is the hot uid heat transfer coecient and hc is the cold uid heat transfer coecient, Kp is the thermal conductivity of the metal plate and x is its thickness. Once the heat exchanger material and its geometry are xed, then the metal wall resistance ( x/Kp ) becomes constant. Similarly, if the ow rate of cold uid is xed and its mean temperature does not dier much for dierent ow rates of hot uid, then the resistance of the cold uid will remain almost constant. Thus, the overall heat transfer coecient will depend upon the value of the hot uid heat transfer coecient alone. If the bulk mean temperature does not dier much for dierent ow rates, then all the physical properties will remain nearly the same and Eq. (3) can be re-written in combination with Eq. (2) as 1 1 m = +C = +C U hh u (4)

where m and C are constants. hh can therefore be evaluated from the intercept of the plot of 1/U vs 1/u . Since the value of is not known, it has to be estimated rst. A plot of log d(1/U )/du vs log u will eliminate the constant C and the slope will give (1). The constant m can also be evaluated with this intercept. Then a plot of 1/U vs 1/u will provide the intercept value C , which is then used to calculate the heat transfer coecient from Eq. (4). The Nusselt number correlation can then be found. For the sake of simplicity, it is often assumed that = 1/3. This can be veried if the plot of 1/U vs 1/u1/3 is a straight line for a large range in the small u limit. HT 310-4

Plots
The following data need to be plotted. A sample calculation to obtain the values of the variables is shown below. 1. Plot of the temperature transient for the hot uid (at the outlet and the inlet) when the heater is turned on till the temperature attains a steady state value 2. Plot of 1/U vs 1/u1/3 : In this plot, for each value of ow rate, U values corresponding to the three independent readings should be shown, apart from the U value computed from the average of the temperature measurement. The average should be used for tting and computing the intercept. Since this involves several calculations, it is suggested that programmable spreadsheets be made use of (OpenOce.org or MS Exel) 3. Plot of Nu/Pr0.4 vs Re

References
1. G H Hewitt, G L Shires, and T R Bott, Process Heat Transfer, CRC Press, NY, 1994

Observations
Height of Plate Width of Plate Gap between two plates Number to plates Number of hot uid chambers Number of cold uid chambers Zero error of hot uid digital thermometers H = 10cm W = 5 cm b = 1 mm N = 10 Nh = 4 Nc = 5 T z =
C

HT 310-5

Observation table
Obs. No. (lph) Flow rate V Hot Fluid Temperature ( C) Inlet (T 1 ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Outlet (T 2 ) Cold Fluid Temperature ( C) Inlet (t1 ) Outlet (t2 )

Parameters estimation
Total heat transfer area of heat exchanger Cup mean temperature (use any typical value) Density of Ethylene glycol at Tm Specic heat of Ethylene glycol at T m Viscosity of Ethylene glycol at Tm Thermal conductivity of Ethylene glycol at T m Prandtl number for hot uid Equivalent diameter Pr = A = NHW
1 Tm = 2 (T 1 + T 2 )

= = = = = = = =

Cp

K Cp K 2W b De = W +b

HT 310-6

Sample calculation
Flow rate Velocity of hot uid in a chamber Total heat transferred Brinkman number Log mean Temperature dierence (LMTD) Overall heat transfer coecient Reynolds number Intercept of 1/U vs 1/u1/3 plot Hot uid heat transfer coecient Nusselt number T LM u= V V W b Nh = = = = = = = = = =

(T 1 T 2 ) Q = Cp V K (T 1 T 2 ) (T 1 t2 ) (T 2 t1 ) = ln [(T 1 t2 )/(T 2 t1 )] U= Q A T LM De u Re = C 1 1 = C hh U Nu = h h De K Br = u2

Student information
Date of Experiment Batch Number Roll Numbers = =

HT 310-7