Thermal Analysis of Complex Crossflow Exchangers in Terms of Standard Configurations

An attempt is made in this paper to examine very complicated heat exchanger flow arrangements and relate them to simple forms for which either a solution exists or an approximate solution can be obtained. This is shown by an example of a tubular crossflow exchanger having seven possible flow arrangements that can be manufactured from the same six-row tube bundle. All but one are shown to be equivalent to standard crossflow configurations that have been solved in the literature, or to assemblies of such configurations. The remaining case can be bracketed between two such geometries. Values for the thermal effectiveness are obtained, and a comparative analysis is performed.