Comparative study of calculation results between EchTherm software and the experimental results from a test bench

The objective of this report is to provide the performance results of a plate and gasket heat exchanger resulting from simulations carried out using the EchTherm software and to compare the results of EchTherm with the experimental performance results of this same heat exchanger tested on a test bench.

This document follows two technical reports including :

• A first written in 2018 by GRETh entitled "Comparative study of calculation results between EchTherm and HTRI software on 9 case studies" proposing to carry out an exercise to compare the results of heat exchanger calculations from the EchTherm software with those of the reference software tools in this field, namely those from the HTRI software.
• A second written in November 2020 entitled "Comparative study of the results of performance calculations of an exchanger between the EchTherm and HTRI software, and the experimental results from a test bench - Tube and shell exchanger", comparing the performance simulation results of a shell and tube heat exchanger using EchTherm and HTRI software with experimental results from a test bench.

In order to complete these analyzes and associated reports, GRETh wished to reiterate a series of test campaigns on a plate and gasket heat exchanger in order to compare the results of the EchTherm software with measurements taken from the test bench.

The main characteristics of the tests that were carried out are as follows :

• Single-phase fluids : water / water
• Temperature : between 10 ° C and 90 ° C
• Power : up to 1.7 MW
• Flow : up to 15 kg/s

This technical report is organized in such a way as to provide as clearly as possible all the elements which allowed this work to be carried out. Thus, here are the themes of the main chapters of this report :

• Presentation of the heat exchanger and the test bench ;
• Choice of test points ;
• Presentation of metrology ;
• Analysis of measurement uncertainties ;
• Treatment and method of analysis of a test point ;
• Performance comparison announced by the manufacturer ;
• Analysis and comparison of the results on each case study ;
• Global analyzes and associated explanations.

It should be noted that the results of the comparisons (Software VS Experiments) are presented in the form of complete tables, but also in the form of radar-type graphs in order to offer an analysis of the results which is intended to be visual, fast and efficient while remaining sufficiently quantitative.

At the very end of the document, a summary will be provided and will make it possible to propose perspectives on the axes of development and improvement of the EchTherm software.

This document is made available exclusively to GRETh members.