Min. Wetted Side Surface Area Coverage for tank JKT?

[mechprocess]

Aside from heat transfer correlations and energy balance calculations, is there some guideline that stipulates the minimum percentage of a tank straight side wetted surface that should be covered in order to have adequate cooling inside a tank?

I am jacketing a tank on the bottom and on the sides to maintain fluid temperature in the tank. The steady state heat duty is small such that the heat balance would only require a small percentage of the wetted side to be jacketed. This impacts cooling water flow rate requirements.

Thanks

 

[TD2K]

I'm not aware of any such requirements. Basically, it's a heat balance as you've done and overall heat transfer coefficient to come up with a required area.

 

[mechprocess]

I just think it would look funny to have a big tank with such a small percentage of the side covered by a jacket. I also wonder why heat transfer programs such as Delta-T ask for the percentage of the wetted side that will be covered. Maybe this is just used to extrapolate the available surface area or maybe it is used to define the surface area and the results just show the temperature profile or cooling capacity.

My worries are that the correlations Kerns uses to calculate the film coefficient inside the tank which are based on a modified Reynolds number have something to do with the length scale of the wetted surface area covered or some other experience related crazy thing that doesn't ever get written up in a text book.

I can't see covering just 20% of the wetted surface area.