ANN-aided optimization study on thermal performance and energy consumption of an industrial shell-and-tube heat exchanger system

Abstract

Abstract Global energy agencies and commissions report a sharp increase in the energy demand based on commercial, industrial, and residential activities. At this point, we need energy-efficient and high performance systems to maintain a sustainable environment. More than 30% of the generated electricity has been consumed by HVAC-R units, and heat exchangers are the main components affecting the overall performance. This study couples the experimental measurements, numerical investigations, and ANN-aided optimization studies to determine the optimal operating conditions of an industrial shell and tube heat exchanger system. The cold/hot stream temperature level is varied between 10 ⁰C and 50 ⁰C during the experiments and numerical investigations. Furthermore, the flow rates are altered in a range of 50–500 L/h to investigate the thermal and hydraulic performance under laminar and turbulent regime conditions. The experimental and numerical results indicate that U-tube bundles dominantly affect (\(\stackrel{-}{{\Delta }\text{P}}\)c ≈ 10×\(\stackrel{-}{{\Delta }\text{P}}\)h) the total pumping power need, while the impact of temperature levels are almost negligible. Once the required data sets are gathered via the experiments and numerical investigations, ANN-aided stochastic optimization algorithms detected the C10H50 scenario as the optimal operating case when the cold and hot stream flow rates are at 100 L/h and 500 L/h, respectively.