heat exchanger effectiveness

[askme]

Is the the effectiveness of a heat exchanger is constant or affected by other factors?

 

[25362]

It is not a constant, it is defined as the ratio of actual heat transfer to maximum possible heat transfer. As for the factors affecting it, the following threads may provide more details.

thread798-149369
thread391-33507
thread391-99241
thread391-100355

J.P.Holman's Heat Transfer (McGraw-Hill) has a whole section on the Effectiveness-NTU method for heat-exchanger analysis.