Friction factors of power-law fluids in chevron-type plate heat exchangers

• Author(s): Fernandes, Carla S. ; Dias, Ricardo P. ; Nóbrega, João M. ; Maia, João M.
• Date: 2008
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/730
• Origin: Biblioteca Digital do IPB
• Subject(s): Plate heat exchangers; Power-law fluids; Generalised Reynolds number; Tortuosity; Friction factor
• Document Type: Article
• Language: English

Description

In the present work laminar flows of Newtonian and power-law fluids through cross-corrugated chevron-type plate heat exchangers (PHEs) are numerically studied in terms of the geometry of the channels. The plates area enlargement factor was a typical one (1.17), the corrugation angle, β, varied between 30° and 60° and the flow index behaviour, n, between 0.25 and 1. Single friction curves fReg = K for both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids are proposed for each β by developing an adequate definition of the generalised Reynolds number, Reg. The coefficient K compares well with experimental data, for all (seven) values of β, and depends on the tortuosity coefficient, τ. It was found that, for each β, τ decreases with the decrease of n. Food fluids are frequently processed in PHEs and usually behave as non-Newtonian fluids. This study can be useful in engineering applications as well as in the characterization of transport phenomena in PHEs.