Abstract :

Recent advancement in the chemical process plants, power industries, cryogenic applications, aerospace applications and electronics technology requires efficient and economic design of compact heat exchangers.This is always a challenge to design a compact heat exchanger because of its complex structure.Plate Fin Heat Exchanger (PTFE) is very common compact heat exchanger used in industries.But many of the cases they are not well designed from the point of view of heat transfer characteristics and pumping power requirement.In this research work an extensive numerical study of the rectangular plate fin heat exchanger is done to evaluate heat transfer characteristic j factor and heat exchanger core pressure drop characteristic Fanning friction factor f as function of heat exchanger geometry and Reynold’s number. Colburn j factor and friction factor are the primary parameters required to find the effectiveness and pumping power requirement of the PTFE.