The spiral-plate heat exchanger (SHE) offers efficiency in spacing and reduces heat losses. SHE’s offer high reliability, lower spaces occupancy, high heat transfer coefficient and on-line performance in many severely fouling services such as slurries. Experimental investigations were conducted in a spiral plate heat exchanger with hot water as the service fluid and cold water in different flow rates as the cold process fluid. The experiments were conducted essentially in the laminar flow range of both the process and service fluids. Computer software which uses FEM and computational fluid dynamics were used to simulate the spiral heat exchanger. The experimental data of flow rates and inlet temperature were used as input data to the simulated SHE. The values like heat transfer coefficient, outlet temperature etc. obtained from experiment and simulation were compared. The simulated Nusselt numbers on the cold side was correlated with Reynolds numbers and Prandtl number and were fitted into a power law equation. Hence Dittus-Boelter’s equation for spiral plate heat exchanger was obtained. The predicted Nusselt number showed a spread of ±2% over the simulated values. Keywords: Spiral plate heat exchanger, Modeling, Simulation and Computational Fluid Dynamics.
