Analysis of heat transfer in heat exchangers

by using the NTU method and empirical

relations
Oddgeir Gudmundsson
Olafur Petur Palsson
Halldor Palsson

Outline
Introduction
Data
Application
Model
Fouling detection

Conclusion
Further work

Introduction
Fouling is inevitable when using heat exchangers. Fouling has
negative effect on heat transfer and will therefore increase cost and
pollution to the environment.
District heating in Iceland is based on geothermal energy.
Geothermal water is rich in minerals which can cause fast and
severe fouling.
Simple, effective and online fouling detection can therefore save cost
and decrease pollution.
The method proposed uses measurements that are readily available
during normal operation of the heat exchanger, temperatures and
mass flows.

Data used in the study

Since data from cross flow heat exchangers are scarce
simulated data was used in the study
The simulator is designed to calculate
the outflow condition of the two
fluids in a unmixed cross-flow heat
exchanger
In the simulator it is possible to vary
all physical parameters of the heat
exchanger and the inflow condition
of the two fluids

Data used in the study

Fouling is simulated by decreasing the overall heat
transfer coefficient, U
It is possible
to target the fouling in specific places of the heat exchanger or,
decrease U uniformly over the whole heat exchange area

For fouling detection with the proposed method the

location of the fouling is not an issue

Simulator Heat exchanger

The following assumptions are made
The heat exchanger is perfectly insulated, that is the heat loss to
the surroundings is negligible
There is no heat conduction in the direction of the flow in the
metal separating the fluids nor in the fluids themselves
There is a uniform temperature in each section of the heat
exchanger and that complete mixing takes place just before the
fluids exit each passage
The specific heat capacities are constant through the heat
exchanger

Simulator Simulated data

The simulated data used was of a heat exchanger with water
on both sides
The temperatures and mass flows were allowed to vary

Hot inlet temperatures were on the interval: [50, 70]C

Cold inlet temperatures were on the interval: [10, 30] C
Hot mass flow were on the interval : [0.3, 1.4] kg/s
Cold mass flow were on the interval : [0.3, 1.4] kg/s

These operating conditions were chosen so that the velocities

in the passages were in the turbulent region as is usually
observed in industrial heat exchangers

Simulator Simulated data

Temperature [C]

80
60
40
20
0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

100

200

300
400
Seconds

500

600

700

mass flow [kg/s]

1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4

Simulator - Fouling
Research has shown that the fouling typically starts
slowly and the fouling rate increases with time.
In fact it has been pointed out that fouling may enhance
the heat transfer during early stages by increasing the
turbulence in the heat exchanger

Simulator Simulated fouling

The evolution of the fouling started slowly but the
accumulation increased with time
The first 25% of the data was simulated without fouling

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Simulator Simulated fouling

Heat exchangers are typically designed to withstand mild
fouling
The line at fouling factor Rf = 0.0001 indicates typical lower limit
that heat exchangers
are designed to withstand
Typical design upper limit of
fouling factor is Rf = 0.0007

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Simulator Simulated data

Two cases of data sets was produced with the same fouling
growth
Short time series, which corresponds with fast fouling
Long time series, which corresponds with slow fouling

The long time series where 2 times longer than the short time
series
In both cases the same inputs intervals where used, the only
difference between the data sets is that the fouling growth is
faster for short data sets than long data sets
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Application Fouling detection

Fouling detecting effectiveness is dependent on the
excitation of the system.
The more excited the system is the harder it is to detect effects of
fouling.
This can easily be seen in the following figures where NTU
method without empirical relations is used to estimate the overall
heat transfer coefficient.

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Application Effect of inputs

4

3.5

3.5

Uest

4.5

Uest
3

2.5

2.5

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

4.5

4.5

3.5

3.5

Uest

The line is the average

of the first 25% of the
data

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

Uest

From the 4 figures to

the right it is apparent
that the excitation in
the system plays vital
role when trying to
detect fouling in heat
exchangers

4.5

2.5

2.5

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

Sample number

14

Application Fouling detection

As fouling accumulates the overall heat transfer
coefficient decreases
It is therefore possible to detect fouling by monitoring a
shift in the overall heat transfer coefficient
It is convenient to use CuSum chart to detect the shift

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Application Fouling detection

During normal use of heat exchangers the overall heat
transfer coefficient is unknown
For a cross flow heat exchanger with both fluid unmixed
NTU can be found from a relation to the effectiveness

16

Application Estimation of NTU

It is known that effectiveness can be calculated
with:
and

NTU can be found by solving

1 2
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Application Empirical relations

As already shown it can be hard to detect the effect of
fouling on the overall heat transfer coefficient with basic
calculations
By introducing empirical relations

it is possible to decrease the influence of the mass flow

on the calculation of the overall heat transfer coefficient

18

Application Empirical relations

It is practical to normalize the overall heat transfer
coefficient with a reference mass flow

Now the overall heat transfer coefficient can be

calculated as

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Application Results
4

3.5

3.5

Uest

4.5

Uest

After the empirical

relations have been
applied and the new
estimation of the
overall heat transfer
coefficient plotted on
the previous figure it
can be seen that the
empirical relations
perform well in
filtering the signal

4.5

2.5

2.5

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

3.5

3.5

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

Uest

4.5

Uest

4.5

2.5

2.5

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

Sample number

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Application Fouling detection

In 95% of the cases the detection interval was
Fast fouling: [0.26, 0.40] in dimensionless time
Slow fouling: [0.23, 0.35] in dimensionless time

The corresponding fouling factor interval is [0.00001,

0.00003]
These can be considered good results comparing to
design limits for the fouling factor which commonly are
chosen to be in the range [0.0001, 0.0007]

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Further work
Further work will include validating the
simulator by comparing the simulations to real
data from a test rig that is currently under
construction in Iceland
Temperature dependency of the overall heat
transfer coefficient will be included in the
method

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Acknowledgements
Environmental and Energy Research Fund of
Orkuveita Reykjavkur,
National Energy Fund and Energy Research
Fund of Landsvirkjun.
Energy Research Fund of Orkustofnun
Sylvain Lalot, professor at the University of
Valenciennes in France
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Thank you for your attention

oddgeir@hi.is

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