Performance of Fin Enhanced Compact Heat Exchanger Using Experimental Analysis
Abstract
The compact heat exchanger is popular in industrial and renewable energy systems, as they are highly efficient as a heat exchanger, and their construction is lightweight and compact. This paper experimentally analyses the thermal effectiveness of a fin-based compact heat exchanger at different hot- and cold-water flow rates (4-7 LPM). The Nusselt number, overall heat transfer coefficient, and compactness factor were determined using temperature data, and a CFD model run on ANSYS 2025 R1 using the k-ε turbulence model was created to validate the results. The findings indicate that the higher the flow rate of the cold side, the better the convective heat transfer, and the resultant maximum increase in the overall heat transfer coefficient was 11.95%. The experiments were in accordance with CFD predictions, and the deviations ranged between 0.9 percent and 11 percent, which proves that the model was reliable. The design is compact, as confirmed by the calculated compactness factor of 231.9 m²/m³, which was compact enough to operate in liquid-to-liquid mode. These results have shown that cold-side flow optimization can enhance thermal performance significantly and give a framework on how to design more efficient compact heat exchangers.