CFD as a design tool for a concentric heat exchanger

Abstract

Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Malta, 16-18 July, 2012.

A concentric gas-to-gas heat exchanger is designed for application as a recuperator in the domestic boiler industry. The recuperator recovers heat from the exhaust gases of a combustion process to preheat the ingoing gaseous fuel mixture resulting in increased fuel efficiency. This applied study shows the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations as an efficient design tool for heat exchanger design. An experimental setup is developed and the simulation results are validated.