Experimental and CFD investigation of overall heat transfer coefficient of finned tube CO <inf>2</inf> gas coolers

Abstract

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) The overall heat transfer coefficient of two CO2 gas coolers was investigated through experiment and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The CFD modelling provided prediction accuracy for the overall heat transfer coefficient with a maximum error of 9% compared to the CFD predictions. Comparing the two gas cooler designs, and from the experimental and modelling results it has been shown that the performance of the gas cooler can be improved by up to 20% through optimization of the circuit design of the gas cooler. A horizontal slit between the 1 st and 2 nd row of tubes of the gas cooler can increase the overall heat transfer coefficient by 8% compared with the a fin without the slit.