Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 19 (2011) 777784

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Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/simpat

Effectiveness charts for counter ow corrugated plate heat exchanger

Harika Sammeta, Kalaichelvi Ponnusamy , M.A. Majid, K. Dheenathayalan
Department of Chemical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli 620 015, India

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

Article history: Gasketed plate heat exchangers (PHEs) are used in refrigeration and heat pump plants and
Received 29 July 2009 are extensively used in the processing of food and drinks, where the ease of plate cleaning
Received in revised form 13 May 2010 and re-gasketting are important. Existing literatures report on the calculation procedure,
Accepted 27 October 2010
performance analysis for different ow congurations, CFD modeling and simulation for
Available online 3 November 2010
different number of plates with various ow patterns as well as passes, analysis charts
for at PHE, etc. However, analysis charts prepared for corrugated PHE are not available
Keywords:
in the open literature. In the present study, a 9-plate counter ow corrugated plate heat
Plate heat exchanger
Counter ow
exchanger is modeled and simulated using computational uid dynamics (CFD). The per-
Simulation formance of the PHE is analyzed using the obtained simulated data in the form of charts
Effectiveness charts such as effectiveness, e versus number of transfer units, NTU at constant capacity ratio,
R; Temperature effectiveness, P versus NTU at constant R and non-dimensional mean tem-
perature difference, h versus temperature effectiveness, P at constant NTU and R.
2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Gasketed plate heat exchangers have a large range of applications. It is more advantageous than conventional heat ex-
changer because of its compactness, easy maintenance, good heat transfer characteristics, exibility to increase the heat
transfer area etc. The heat transfer surface consists of a number of thin corrugated plates pressed to a xed plate. The pressed
pattern on each plate surface induces turbulence and minimizes stagnant areas and fouling. Gaskets are tted to seal the
plate channels and interfaces. The frame consists of a xed frame plate at one end and a moveable pressure plate at the other.
The moveable plate facilitates access for cleaning or exchanging the heat transfer surfaces. A feature of this type of heat ex-
changer has the ability to add or remove surface area as necessary.
Flavio et al. [1] gave basic description of plate heat exchangers and its types, its advantages over conventional heat
exchangers. The ow pattern of milk between the corrugated plates is analyzed using 2D and 3D computational uid dynam-
ics (CFD). The 2D calculation shows the inuence of the corrugations shape, but the 3D calculations are necessary to assess
the importance of the corrugation orientation [2]. Harika et al. [3] have presented the effectiveness charts for 9-channel par-
allel ow plate heat exchanger from the simulated data using CFD. A validated model was simulated at different operating
conditions using CFD. The performance of this PHE is analyzed using these effectiveness charts. Jackson and Troupe [4] ana-
lyzed 11 and 22 pass arrangement with overall counter ow and parallel ow. They obtained results for 0.3 < NTU < 12,
R = 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1, and for up to n = 6 channels. An algorithmic for the steady-state simulation of gasketed plate heat
exchangers with generalized congurations has developed and mainly purposes of this model are to study the conguration
inuence on the exchanger performance, [5]. Kho and Muller-steinhagen, [6] analyzed the heat transfer fouling and uid
ow in at plate heat exchanger both experimentally and numerically. Basic theory and calculations methods are analyzed

Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 431 2503110; fax: +91 431 2500133.
E-mail address: kalai@nitt.edu (K. Ponnusamy).

1569-190X/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.simpat.2010.10.012
778 H. Sammeta et al. / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 19 (2011) 777784

Nomenclature

Abbreviations
PHE plate heat exchanger
PHEs plate heat exchangers
CFD computational uid dynamics
ITD inlet temperature difference
NTU number of transfer units
LMTD log mean temperature difference

Symbols
A area of heat transfer, m2
Q heat transfer rate, kW
Qc heat transfer rate of cold streams, kW
Qh heat transfer rate of hot streams, kW
Tci temperature of cold streams at inlet port, K
Tco temperature of cold streams at outlet port, K
Thi temperature of hot streams at inlet port, K
Tho temperature of hot streams at outlet port, K
U over all heat transfer coefcient, W m2 K1
Ch heat capacity of hot uid, kJ s1 K1
Cc heat capacity of cold uid, kJ s1 K1
R heat capacity ratio
P1 temperature effectiveness of the cold uid
P2 temperature effectiveness of the hot uid
DTmax inlet temperature difference, K

Greeks letters
e effectiveness
h non-dimensional temperature difference

and given [7,8]. Zaleski and Klepacka [9] presented charts based on model equations as Dhm versus P, LMTD correction factor
versus P as function of NTU and R for the various congurations of a at plate heat exchanger. Zaleski and Jarzebski [10] has
studied as the number of plate increases, the thermal effectiveness of PHEs approaches the effectiveness of counter ow or
parallel ow heat exchangers.
There charts available for the performance of PHE are based on either experimental predictions or numerical predictions.
However, these charts were developed for the plates without corrugation. Hence, in this present study an effort was made to
develop effectiveness charts for counter ow corrugated PHE. A model of corrugated PHE with 9-channels which was already
validated (Harika et al. [3]) for parallel ow is modied with suitable boundary conditions and simulated for different oper-
ating conditions. These simulated outlet temperatures were used for developing effectiveness charts.

2. Simulation

2.1. CFD modeling

Preprocessing, the primary step of the CFD simulation was done by GAMBIT 2.2.30. It includes dening geometry, mesh
generation etc. Geometry was dened by creating the required domain of known dimensions. Mesh generation was done by
trial and error till the selected mesh could cover all the nodes of the domain. The uids that are present in the ow geometry
were dened. The boundary conditions and material properties of the geometry were specied. Then the domain was ex-
ported to Fluent 6.3.26 which is a solver. In solver, Finite volume method was employed to solve the set of governing equa-
tions numerically. Solver part solves the ow problem using numerical techniques like differencing schemes and
discretization techniques. The nal step in CFD, the post-processing was carried out to rene the simulation data for visu-
alizing the vector plots, contour plots and particle tracking.

2.2. Dening the geometry

A 9-plate PHE domain is created with the dimensions of plate thickness = 0.605 mm, plate width = 73 mm, plate
length = 96 mm, port diameter = 10 mm, channel spacing = 3.96 mm.
 H. Sammeta et al. / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 19 (2011) 777784 779

2.3. Mesh generation

Tetrahedral Meshing with spacing of 1 mm was applied to the plate volumes and same meshing was given to uid chan-
nels with 3 mm spacing. Number of meshed volumes created on hot uid side were 111,927; number of meshed volumes
created on cold uid side were 89,772 and the number of meshed volumes created on single plate were 9578. The proposed
model contains approximately 293,000 tetrahedral elements.

2.4. Specifying material properties and boundary conditions

The material present is dened as a uid. The hot and cold inlet boundary conditions were set as velocity inlets, and the
outlets were set as pressure outlets. The metal plates were modeled as thin walls with the thermal resistance of a 1 mm
stainless steel. All the exterior walls were modeled as adiabatic. The uid domains were modeled with the properties of
water. The ow pattern that is followed in the PHE model is given in Fig. 1.

2.5. Simulation

The simulation was solved using the laminar ow model, the ke turbulence model with wall functions and the ke tur-
bulence model with enhanced wall treatment. It was veried that the ow inside the exchanger was mostly laminar; how-
ever, there were turbulent regions, especially near the plate ports. In order to correctly model the ow and heat transfer, the
ke turbulence model with enhanced wall treatment model was chosen. The ke model was solved for the wall with no aid of
length-scale-based wall functions.
The problem was numerically solved using the nite volume method with the software FLUENT 6.3.26. The simulations were
carried in a Pentium 4 workstation with 2 GB RAM. Each simulation took approximately 2 h to converge with a criterion of
1  104, e.g. all equations reached a scaled residual value of 1  104 and the temperature monitor on the hot outlet was stable.
The simulations were done for sets of hot and cold ow rates (0.002, 0.003, 0.005, 0.008, 0.02, 0.04, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 kg/s) for
the given inlet temperature of 300 K for cold and 370 K for hot uids. The temperature contours for a constant hot uid ow
rate of the counter ow PHE is presented in Fig. 2. Here, the blue color port is the cold inlet where as the red color port in the
opposite side is the hot inlet. As the cold uid ow rate increases, the rate of heat transfer from the hot uid is also increas-
ing, which is clearly observed from Fig. 2. All the plates could be used effectively when the ow rates were low however, at
high ow rates last few plates have not been utilized effectively.

3. Validation of simulated results

In order to validate the model used for the present analysis, the DThot values for cold uid side were calculated for dif-
ferent capacity ratios of cold uid and were plotted as shown in Fig. 3. The DT values obtained (Harika et al. [3]) for parallel
ow 9-channel corrugated PHE were also plotted in the gure for comparison. It is observed that the temperature difference
for counter ow is less compared to the parallel ow, which agrees with fundamental concepts of better performance of
counter ow heat exchangers when compared with the parallel ow heat exchangers.

4. Exchanger analysis

The analysis of PHE is rather complex as it is coupled with its neighboring channels on both sides. For few plates, end
effect will be present and a rigorous analysis is required for the PHE. The following assumptions were considered to derive
the mathematical model, for analyzing the PHE in terms of various charts.

Fig. 1. Fluid ow pattern in plate heat exchanger.

780 H. Sammeta et al. / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 19 (2011) 777784

Fig. 2. Temperature contours of 0.005 kg/s hot ow rate for various cold ow rates.

(1) Plug ow is assumed due to high turbulence in channels and their narrow width.
(2) The exchanger operates under a steady-state condition.
(3) The heat losses to the surroundings are negligible. This assumes that the two end plates serve as insulating walls.
(4) There is no heat conduction in the direction of uid ow in the plates and uids themselves.
(5) The temperature and ow rates are assumed to be uniform across the ow passage.
 H. Sammeta et al. / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 19 (2011) 777784 781

Fig. 3. Comparison of parallel and counter ows of corrugated PHE at 0.02 kg/s hot ow rate.

(6) Uniform distribution of ow through the channels of a pass.

(7) All ow and thermal properties are independent of temperature.
(8) No phase changes and no heat transfer takes place through sealing edges and gaskets.
(9) The overall heat transfer coefcient, U, is constant throughout the exchanger.
(10) The specic heat of each uid is constant throughout the exchanger.

There are three methods of analysis available for analyzing the performance of any heat exchanger. They are eNTU meth-
od, PNTU method and hP method. Depending on the nature of the problem and available data, a method of analysis for
heat exchangers can be selected. These methods of our analysis are explained below.

5. Data reduction

The relations and formulae used in this present studies for various parameters calculation is analyzed and given as men-
tion as below.

5.1. The eNTU method

The heat transfer rate from the hot uid to the cold uid in the heat exchanger in eNTU method, is expressed as
q eC min T hi  T ci eC min DT max 1
where e is the heat exchanger effectiveness, sometimes referred as the thermal efciency, Cmin is the minimum of Ch and Cc;
DTmax = (Thi  Tci) is the uid inlet temperature difference (ITD). The heat exchanger effectiveness e is non-dimensional, and
it can be shown that in general it is dependent on the number of transfer units NTU, the heat capacity rate ratio R, and the
ow arrangement for a direct-transfer type heat exchanger:
e f NTU; R; flow arrangement 2
The effectiveness for parallel ow heat exchanger is given by
1  expNTU1 R
e 3
1R

5.2. The PNTU method

The heat transfer rate from the hot uid to the cold uid in the heat exchanger in PNTU method, is expressed as
q P 1 C 1 DT max P 2 C 2 DT max 4
where P1, P2 are the temperature effectiveness for uids 1 and 2 respectively, C1 = (mcp)1, C2 = (mcp)2 are the heat capacity
rates for uids 1 and 2 respectively, and DTmax = (Thi  Tci) is the inlet temperature difference. The temperature effectiveness
P, similar to e, is non-dimensional and is dependent on the number of transfer units, heat capacity rate ratio, and the ow
arrangement. Temperature effectiveness of the cold uid is given by
T co T ci
P1 5
T hi  T ci
782 H. Sammeta et al. / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 19 (2011) 777784

5.3. The hP method

This method was proposed by Muller (1967) [11] by plotting h as a function of P1 and R1 with the lines for constant values
of NTU1. Note that the constant NTU1 lines are straight, passing through the (0, 0) point, and having a slope of 1/NTU1. Hence,
it is easy to draw NTU lines. In this method, the heat transfer rate in the exchanger is given by

q UAhT hi  T ci 6
The non-dimensional temperature is given by

e P1
h 7
NTU NTU1
This method combines all variables of the LMTD and PNTU methods and eliminates the limitations for a hand solution.

6. Results and discussion

6.1. Performance analysis using eNTU method

The simulated outlet temperatures of hot and cold uid at different ow rates arrived were used to calculate the different
parameters needed for preparing eNTU chart. The chart based on these simulated data is presented in Fig. 4.
From this chart we could observe that the heat exchanger effectiveness e increases monotonically with increasing values
of NTU for a specied R. For counter ow at all R, e ? 1 as NTU ? 1. For a specied R, as NTU increases, i.e., Cmin decreases
then the ow rates increases. As the ow rates of the uids increases, more turbulence is created which leads to monotonic
increase in effectiveness. The exchanger effectiveness e increases with decreasing values of R for a specied NTU. For e 6 0.4,
the heat capacity rate ratio R does not have a signicant inuence on the exchanger effectiveness.
The counter ow exchanger has the highest exchanger effectiveness e for specied NTU and R of that for all other exchan-
ger ow arrangements. Thus, for a given NTU and R, maximum heat transfer performance is achieved for counter ow; alter-
natively, the heat transfer surface area is utilized most efciently for counter ow compared to all other ow arrangements.
When the heat exchanger cost is an important consideration, most heat exchangers are designed in the approximate lin-
ear range of eNTU curves (NTU 6 2 or e 6 0.6) that will meet the required heat duty with appropriate values of Cmin and
DTmax. The reason for this is that an increase in the exchanger size (NTU) will increase with e linearly and hence will result
in a good return on the investment of added surface area. However, when the exchanger is a component in the system, and
an increase in the exchanger effectiveness has a signicant impact on reducing the system operating cost compared to an
increase in the exchanger cost, the exchangers are designed for high effectivenesses.
This chart follows the same pattern as parallel ow (Harika et al. [3]). e does not approach unity for the parallel ow con-
guration whereas for the counter ow PHE e ? 1 as NTU ? 1 for all R.

Fig. 4. eNTU chart for 9-plate corrugated counter ow PHE.

 H. Sammeta et al. / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 19 (2011) 777784 783

Fig. 5. PNTU chart for 9-plate corrugated counter ow PHE.

Fig. 6. hP chart for 9-plate corrugated counter ow PHE.

6.2. Performance analysis using PNTU method

This is almost similar to eNTU chart. The difference is that in case of eNTU method identication of Cmin is difcult,
which changes if the number of passes changes. Hence PNTU method is generally preferred in order to avoid the errors
and confusions. The chart based on the calculations for this method is presented in Fig. 5.
784 H. Sammeta et al. / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 19 (2011) 777784

Monotonic increase in e heat exchanger effectiveness e with increasing values of NTU for a specied R could be observed
from Fig. 5. For a specied R, as NTU increases, i.e., Cmin decreases then the ow rates increases.
This chart is also the same as the charts prepared for parallel ow (Harika et al. [3]). P1 approach unity only for higher
values of R in the parallel ow conguration whereas for the counter ow PHE, P1 easily approaches unity for all values
of R. This may be due to reason that outlet temperatures of cold uid could almost reaches the hot uid inlet temperatures
for all the R values considered in the present analysis. We could also observer that PNTU curves of counter ow for different
Rs overlapping.

6.3. Performance analysis using hP method

The simulated outlet temperatures of hot and cold uid at different ow rates arrived were also used to calculate the dif-
ferent parameters needed for preparing hP charts. The chart based on these simulated data is presented in Fig. 6.
From the chart we could observe that for lower ow rates, the non-dimensional temperature difference increases with
increase in temperature effectiveness. At higher ow rate increases, as P increases h goes on decreasing and remains constant
and then again starts decreasing. At higher ow rates, the residence time for the cold uid was not sufcient enough to ap-
proach the hot uid inlet temperature and hence there is a decreasing trend in non-dimensional temperature difference with
increase in temperature effectiveness. The charts clearly decide the viability of the operating range of the counter ow heat
exchanger in terms of ow rates.

7. Conclusion

The model developed using CFD could reveal the heat ow behavior along the length of the heat exchanger with the help
of contours. The outlet temperatures obtained while simulating the model at different operating conditions could be used for
preparing effectiveness charts. These charts are useful in the performance analysis of PHE. They are also useful in rating and
sizing of PHE. Both eNTU and PNTU are very much similar and one can use any one of them based on the availability of
data. eNTU and PNTU charts are more useful for industrial rating and sizing of a heat exchanger where as Ph method is
used very rarely. These charts are valid for NTU ranging from 0 to 6 and Reynoldss number 8028,000 for constant heat
capacity ratios, R. The hP charts prepared in the present study clearly decide the viability of the operating range of the
9-channel corrugated plate counter ow heat exchanger in terms of ow rates. The developed model is useful to generate
wide range of data points which is difcult to obtain experimentally.

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