Experimental Measurement of Cooling Water Fouling in an Annular Flow Heat Exchanger

Cooling water as one of the most common heat transfer fluids used in the industrial units has great potential for scale formation in heat exchangers. In this study, large number of experiments performed to measure the cooling water fouling in a heat exchanger with annular flow and hydraulic diameter of 40 mm under forced convective heat transfer. The experiments performed to study the effects of parameters like fluid velocity (0.019, 0.037, and 0.058 m/s) and heat flux (16180, 18520, 24631 W/m2) on surface temperature, heat transfer coefficient and fouling resistance. In this study, increase of the heat transfer surface temperature with time was used as an evidence for deposit formation on the surface. Results showed that increasing the fluid velocity decreases the temperature of the heat transfer surface, and as a result enhances the heat transfer coefficient, and decreases the fouling resistance. Also, it was shown that increasing the heat flux enhances the surface temperature, decreases the heat transfer coefficient and increases the fouling resistance.