Design and thermal-hydraulic optimization of a shell and tube heat exchanger using bees algorithm

Abstract

The present study modifies the structural design of a shell-and-tube heat exchanger by considering two key parameters such as the maximization of the overall heat transfer coefficient and minimization of the total pressure drop. Five geometric design variables which include the tube inside diameter, tube outside diameter, pitch size, baffle spacing, and the tube length are investigated for optimization. The governing equations for design and optimization of the shell-and-tube heat exchanger are evaluated and the optimum design parameters are obtained by bees algorithm. The selection of the important design parameters to achieve the proper design is evaluated by fixing each of these parameters, while the other the design parameters are selected as variable to optimize the effectiveness. Compared with the original shell-and-tube heat exchanger, the overall heat transfer coefficient is increased by 22.78% with the minimum increase in the total pressure drop by 1.8%.