Analysis of non-equidistant baffle spacing in a small shell and tube heat exchanger

Most of the formulations regarding the characteristics of a shell and tube heat exchanger have a common assumption; namely that the baffle plates are equidistant. This assumption fails to cater the real world scenario for defective baffles as the alteration in a shell and tube heat exchanger invalidates the equidistant baffle spacing of the plates. In this regard, a small six baffles heat exchanger was modeled in the computational fluid dynamics software package and studied by removing each baffle plate one at a time. Effect of removing each baffle plate on the temperature, pressure, heat transfer coefficient, and total heat transfer rate was recorded. It was observed that variation in the pressure drop for the same number of baffle plates varies along the axial order of the plates. The change in pressure drop due to the removal of the baffle plate near the inlet and the outlet was lowest and reaches a maximum in the axial center. It was also found that the plates below the radial center contribute higher towards the overall heat transfer as compared to those above.