A serpentine tube heat exchanger is physically constrained by its bend radius. The U-tube bend section of a tubular heat exchanger is thus interesting broadly in terms of fluid flow and heat transfer. This paper presents the tube size dependence of heating profile of this U-tube as is commonly encountered in the design of pasteurizers. Analytical and computational modeling were employed in investigating the heat capacity, heat flux, heating rate and energy use of a U-tube at increasing diameters 9.52, 12.70, 19.05 and 25.40 mm, each at constant 1 mm thickness. SolidWorks 2016 was used in geometric modeling while Ansys v16 was used for transient thermal computational fluid dynamics simulation of the conduit (SS316L) and the product (coconut water). The... |