Investigation of the effect of baffle cut on heat transfer and pressure drop in shell-and-tube heat exchangers using CFD

The shell-and-tube heat exchanger (STHE) is one of the most widely used types of heat exchangers in industry. For this reason, studies conducted to improve the performance of STHEs are of great importance. In this study, a single-shell- and double-tube-pass STHE was designed, and a three-dimensional and steady-state flow analysis of this heat exchanger was conducted using the CFD method. The purpose of the analysis was to investigate the effect of baffle cut and mass flow rate of the fluid on the shell side on heat transfer and pressure drop by using the ANSYS Fluent, which is a type of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. For this aim, oil and water are used as working fluids in the shell and tubes of the STHE, respectively. Four different mass flow rates (0.6 kg/s, 0.8 kg/s, 1.0 kg/s, and 1.2 kg/s) are used for the fluid in the shell. In the analysis, three different STHEs with baffle cuts of 20%, 30%, and 40% are compared. According to the results of the CFD analysis, baffle cut plays an important role in heat transfer and pressure drop. The highest heat transfer per pressure drop was achieved for the STHE with 40% baffle cut and the lowest was achieved for the STHE with 20% baffle cut.