Abstract
An experimental study was conducted to investigate the fouling effects of geothermal water scale deposited onto a heating surface upon its forced convection heat transfer characteristics. Scales deposited onto the heating surfaces of heat exchangers seriously reduce the heat transfer perfor-mance and also increase the hydrodynamic drag. Accordingly fouling is an important problem in the design and operation of heat exchangers. The cylinders were settled in tandem with equal dis-tance between neighbouring cylinders and only the test cylinder was heated under the condition of constant heat flux. The Reynolds number was varied from 13000310 through 50003100. It is found that the heat transfer of the in-line tube banks greatly varies with the fouling of geothermal water scale especially its scale height. Further the local and average Nusselt numbers strongly depend upon the cylinder spacing and the Reynolds number.