Review of passive heat transfer augmentation techniques

Abstract

Heat transfer augmentation techniques (passive, active or a combination of passive and active methods) are commonly used in areas such as process industries, heating and cooling in evaporators, thermal power plants, air-conditioning equipment, refrigerators, radiators for space vehicles, automobiles, etc. Passive techniques, where inserts are used in the flow passage to augment the heat transfer rate, are advantageous compared with active techniques, because the insert manufacturing process is simple and these techniques can be easily employed in an existing heat exchanger. In design of compact heat exchangers, passive techniques of heat transfer augmentation can play an important role if a proper passive insert configuration can be selected according to the heat exchanger working condition (both flow and heat transfer conditions). In the past decade, several studies on the passive techniques of heat transfer augmentation have been reported. The present paper is a review on progress with the passive augmentation techniques in the recent past and will be useful to designers implementing passive augmentation techniques in heat exchange. Twisted tapes, wire coils, ribs, fins, dimples, etc., are the most commonly used passive heat transfer augmentation tools. In the present paper, emphasis is given to works dealing with twisted tapes and wire coils because, according to recent studies, these are known to be economic heat transfer augmentation tools. The former insert is found to be suitable in a laminar flow regime and the latter is suitable for turbulent flow. The thermohydraulic behaviour of an insert mainly depends on the flow conditions (laminar or turbulent) apart from the insert configurations. The present review is organized in five different sections: twisted tape in laminar flow; twisted tape in turbulent flow; wire coil in laminar flow; wire coil in turbulent flow; other inserts such as ribs, fins, dimples, etc.