This paper investigates the influence of inlet temperature on the pressure drop and fouling deposit in a tubular heat exchanger. The tube bundle comprises three columns and six rows of copper tubes with a diameter of 0.015 m. The transverse distance between the tubes is 0.0225 m, and the longitudinal distance between the tubes is 0.03 m. Three levels of inlet air temperature: 30, 60, and 90 °C, were varied to examine the effect of inlet temperature using both numerical and experimental methods. For the numerical study, computational fluid dynamics using Ansys Fluent 2021 R1 was employed to observe the temperature distribution in the tube bundle and the normalized pressure drop at different inlet temperatures and Reynolds numbers. Simultaneously, an airflow experiment in the heat exchanger was conducted to monitor the pressure drop and fouling deposit at varying inlet temperatures. The results indicate that the temperature in the tube bundle increases with the inlet temperature, and the space between each transverse tube exhibits a lower temperature than other areas. Additionally, the increase in the inlet temperature leads to a reduction in fouling deposit and pressure drop. However, there is a discrepancy between the pressure drop obtained from the numerical and experimental studies. Heat exchange takes place on a nanometric scale.

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