Optimization of channel spacing for the heat transfer performance of corrugated plate heat exchangers

---------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------Abstract The corrugated plate heat exchanger (PHE) is used to carry out the experiments for water as both hot and cold fluids. The experiments were conducted for 300 corrugation angle with 15 mm channel spacing hot fluid and 5 mm spacing of cold fluid. The Realizable k-ε model was used for CFD simulation of PHE to validate given model with experimentation. The thermal analysis and pressure drop calculation were done for different cold channel spacing’s of 2.5 mm, 5 mm, 7.5 mm, 10 mm, 12.5 mm and 15 mm with fixed corrugation angle 300. The CFD analysis was done to find optimal channel spacing and optimal corrugation angle which will have high heat transfer to pressure drop ratio. It was found that heat transfer rate and pressure drop decreases as channel spacing increases, also heat transfer rate and pressure drop increases as corrugation angle increases.