Pilot plant study for effective heat transfer area of coiled flow inverter

•Small foot print CFI heat exchanger has been proposed for process intensification.•Miniaturized CFI offers same heat transfer duty to that of the CFI of At = 1.76 m2.•Proposed CFI offers up to 5 fold enhanced U0 compared to SHE and PHE (At = 1.76 m2).•The miniaturized CFI was found in linear range of ε–NTU curve (NTU ≤ 2 or ε ≤ 0.8).

Three new coiled flow inverter (CFI) heat exchangers with heat transfer area (At) of 0.88 m2 (4-banks), 0.44 m2 (2-banks) and 0.22 m2 (1-bank) were designed, fabricated and commissioned to develop a more compact heat exchanger. More than 800 experiments were carried-out in counter-flow configuration. The hot and cold fluids were used in the tube and shell side of CFI heat exchanger, respectively. Tube side flow rates were varied from 50–300 kg/h for water and 30–100 kg/h for compressed air, respectively. The shell side flow rates were varied from 100–2000 kg/h for water and 400–750 kg/h for air, respectively. The overall heat transfer coefficients of present CFI heat exchangers were found in good agreement with the results reported for the CFI heat exchangers of At = 1.76 m2. The proposed CFI heat exchanger with At = 0.22 m2 provides 2.2–4.5 and 2–3.6 times higher overall heat transfer coefficient as compared to SHE and PHE of At = 1.76 m2, respectively. The present study offers a small footprint CFI heat exchanger to meet the same heat transfer duty as compared to previously reported study.