Recirculation model of kettle reboiler

The present paper deals with the simulation of a kettle reboiler. Considering rectangular tube sheet, concept of internal recirculation developed in a kettle reboiler during boiling, changes in physico-thermal property of liquid and liquid vapour mixture with temperature and pressure and using empirical correlations, a hydrodynamic model has been developed to determine pressure drop, vapour quality, recirculation rate, boiling regime, and heat transfer coefficient at various tube rows of the bundle.Results show, recirculation rate in a reboiler has been found to vary with the heat flux and pressure. Further, at a given value of heat flux and pressure vapour quality, mass flux, and heat transfer coefficient have been found to increase gradually from bottom to top tube row of the bundle.     

Transition and flow boiling heat transfer inside a horizontal tube

Experiments on transition and flow boiling heat transfer with refrigerant R114 inside a horizontal tube were performed at bubble flow, critical heat flux and in the transition region between bubble flow and film boiling at mass fluxes between 1200 and 4000 kg/m² s and in the pressure range between 5 and 15 bar. In comparison with pool boiling bubble flow heat transfer depends essentially on the mass flow rates and on the vapor quality. The critical heat flux depends less on the temperature difference than in pool boiling heat transfer and exhibits a maximal and a minimal value as a function of the pressure. The critical heat flux increases with mass flow rate as already shown by Collier. In the region of transition boiling the heat flux over the difference between wall and saturation temperature approaches a horizontal curve. Therefore in this region an evaporator may always be operated under stable conditions and burn out does not occur.     

Investigation of flow phenomena in a kettle reboiler

Two-phase flow phenomena were investigated while boiling R113 and n-pentane in a 241-tube thin slice kettle reboiler. For heat fluxes between 10 and 40 kW/m², row pressure drop measurements were made in three columns and visual observations of the flow patterns were recorded by a video camera. The height of the two-phase mixture above the tube bundle was also varied. The results revealed that the height of the mixture had little effect on the row pressure drop distribution in each column. At heat fluxes below 10 kW/m², the pressure drops were reasonably constant. However, at heat fluxes greater than this, the row pressure drop continuously declined.Two one-point-five-dimensional models were developed, one to aid the investigation of static liquid driven lateral flow in the tube bundle, and another to aid the investigation of the cause of the change from reasonably constant to continually declining row pressure drop. The data and the analysis showed that the flow within the tube bundle was always two-dimensional and that the flow pattern was dominated by the static liquid at the tube bundle edge when the heat flux was less than 10 kW/m². This corresponded to the bubbly flow regime. At larger heat fluxes, the flow pattern changed to intermittent flow. The change occurred when the Kutateladze number was 1.09. Declining row pressure drops occurred in this latter flow regime.     

Visualisation of heat transfer in 3D unsteady flows

Heat transfer in fluid flows traditionally is examined in terms of temperature field and heat-transfer coefficients at non-adiabatic walls. However, heat transfer may alternatively be considered as the transport of thermal energy by the total convective–conductive heat flux in a way analogous to the transport of fluid by the flow field. The paths followed by the total heat flux are the thermal counterpart to fluid trajectories and facilitate heat-transfer visualisation in a similar manner as flow visualisation. This has great potential for applications in which insight into the heat fluxes throughout the entire configuration is essential (e.g. cooling systems, heat exchangers). To date this concept has been restricted to 2D steady flows. The present study proposes its generalisation to 3D unsteady flows by representing heat transfer as the 3D unsteady motion of a virtual fluid subject to continuity. This unified ansatz enables heat-transfer visualisation with well-known geometrical methods from laminar-mixing studies. These methods lean on the property that continuity “organises” fluid trajectories into sets of coherent structures (“flow topology”) that geometrically determine the fluid transport. Decomposition of the flow topology into its constituent coherent structures visualises the transport routes and affords insight into the transport properties. Thermal trajectories form a thermal topology of essentially equivalent composition that can be visualised by the same methodology. This thermal topology is defined in both flow and solid regions and thus describes the heat transfer throughout the entire domain of interest. The heat-transfer visualisation is provided with a physical framework and demonstrated by way of representative examples.     

A New One/Two-Dimensional Model of the Conjugate Heat Transfer in Waterwall Tubes of the Supercritical Steam Boiler Combustion Chamber

An important issue arising in supercritical steam boilers is to avoid the tube wall overheating due to high heat fluxes transferred from flue gases to the fluid. The paper presents a new hybrid one/two-dimensional model of the fluid heating in waterwall tubes in the combustion chambers of steam boilers for supercritical steam parameters. The model is based on distributed parameters. The analysis concerns tubes with externally finned surfaces. Using the proposed model, it is possible to estimate zones and locations where the tube wall overheating may occur. One-dimensional equations describing the mass, momentum and energy conservation are formulated and solved for the fluid domain. Each analyzed cross section of the finned waterwall tube is divided into 20 control volumes for which energy balance equations are solved in a two-dimensional space. In order to analyses the conjugate heat transfer between the waterwall tube and the fluid, the heat transfer coefficient is computed using the Kitoh correlation. The computations assume a variable heat flux along the combustion chamber height. Also, the heat flux variation on the waterwall tube circumference is incorporated within the model. The reduction in dimensionality in both the fluid and the solid domains leads to an improvement in the computational performance compared to complex three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulations. The paper presents an application of the proposed hybrid model to simulate heat and flow processes occurring in waterwall tubes of a supercritical boiler operating in one of the Polish power plants. The results of the simulations are compared with the data obtained from measurements and good agreement is obtained. Therefore, the developed model can be successfully applied, e.g. in simulators of the supercritical power boiler operation.     

Development of a diabatic two-phase flow pattern map for horizontal flow boiling

An improved two-phase flow pattern map is proposed for evaporation in horizontal tubes. Based on new flow pattern data for three different refrigerants covering a wide range of mass velocities, vapor qualities and heat fluxes. The new flow pattern map includes the prediction of the onset of dryout at the top of the tube during evaporation inside horizontal tubes as a function of heat flux and flow parameters and is an extension to the flow pattern map model of Kattan et al. [J. Heat Transfer 120 (1998) 140]. The proposed modifications allow an accurate prediction of the flow pattern for very different fluids which are the substitute refrigerants (HFC-134a and HFC-407C) and the natural refrigerant R-717 (ammonia).     

Numerical Simulation of Laminar Film Condensation in a Horizontal Minitube with and Without Non-Condensable Gas by the VOF Method

Based on the volume of fluid (VOF) method, a steady three-dimensional numerical simulation of laminar film condensation of water vapor in a horizontal minitube, with and without non-condensable gas, has been conducted. A user-defined function defining the phase change is interpreted and the interface temperature is correspondingly assumed to be the saturation temperature. An annular flow pattern is to be expected according to a generally accepted flow regime map. The heat-transfer coefficient increases with higher saturation temperature and a smaller temperature difference between the saturation and wall temperatures, but varies little with different mass flux and degree of superheat. The existence of a non-condensable gas will lead to the generation of a gas layer between vapor and liquid, resulting in a lower mass-transfer rate near the interface and higher vapor quality at the outlet. In consequence, the heat-transfer coefficient of condensation with a non-condensable gas drops sharply compared with that of pure vapor condensation. Meanwhile, the non-condensable gas with a smaller thermal conductivity would cause a stronger negative effect on heat flux as a result of a higher thermal resistance of heat conduction in the non-condensable gas layer.     

Effect of tube bundles on nucleate boiling and critical heat flux

In order to elucidate boiling heat transfer characteristics for each tube and the critical heat flux (CHF) for tube bundles, an experimental investigation of pool and flow boiling of Freon-113 at 0.1 MPa was performed using two typical tube arrangements. A total of fifty heating tubes of 14 mm diameter, equipped with thermocouples and cartridge heaters, were arrayed at pitches of 18.2 and 21.0 mm to simulate both square in-line and equilateral staggered bundles. For the flow boiling tests the same bundles as were used in pool boiling were installed in a vertical rectangular channel, to which the fluid was supplied with an approach velocity varying from 0.022 to 0.22 m/s. It was found in this study that the boiling heat transfer coefficient of each tube in a bundle was higher than that for an isolated single tube in pool boiling. This enhancement increases for tubes at higher locations, but decreases as heat flux is increased. At heat fluxes exceeding certain values, the heat transfer coefficient becomes the same as that for an isolated tube. As the heat flux approaches the CHF, flow pulsations occurred in the pool boiling experiments although the heat transfer coefficient was invariant even under this situation. The approach velocity has an appreciable effect on heat transfer up to a certain level of heat flux. In this range of heat flux, the heat transfer coefficient exceeds the values observed for pool boiling. An additive method with two contributions, i.e., single phase convection and boiling, was used to predict the heat transfer coefficient for bundles. The predicted results showed reasonable agreement with the measured results. The critical heat flux in tube bundles tended to increase as more bubbles were rising through the tube clearance. © 1998 Scripta Technica, Heat Trans Jpn Res, 27(4): 312–325, 1998     

Investigation of Bubble Behavior in Subcooled Flow Boiling of Water in a Horizontal Annulus Using High-Speed Flow Visualization

Experiments have been carried out to study bubble behavior in subcooled flow boiling of water in a horizontal annulus at mass fluxes from 400 to 1200 kg/m²-s, heat fluxes from 0.1 to 1 MW/m², and pressures varying from 1 to 4 bar using high-speed visualization methods. National Instruments Labview IMAQ Vision Builder automated image-processing software was used to analyze the images obtained by high-speed visualization to obtain bubble size and bubble density. The parametric effects of pressure, mass flux, and heat flux on bubble behavior have also been brought out. Experimental results were validated by comparing with the predicted bubble sizes by using the Zeitoun and Shoukri (1996) correlation and were found to be in good agreement. It was found that bubble behavior is significantly affected by mass flux of working fluid and applied heat flux, whereas pressure of working fluid influences the bubble formation process indirectly.     

Effect of Bubble Turbulence and Submergence on Boiling Incipience in Vertical Thermosiphon Reboiler

A detailed study has been carried out to clarify the conditions of boiling incipience phenomena for natural flow in vertical tube thermosiphon reboiler. A semi-empirical model has been proposed that considers the effect of turbulent eddies and submergence for the data available in literature. Boiling incipience in liquid films is influenced both by turbulent eddies and submergence, and their effect is dominant with increasing heat flux. The superheat for boiling incipience was determined experimentally for different types of organic liquids including water, covering a wide range of physical properties. The predicted results from the proposed model and experimental data available in literature show a consistency for all fluids investigated in this study. It has an average absolute relative error of 15% for the proposed unified correlation of all fluid systems together, which have a wide range of thermophysical properties.     

Experimental study of convective condensation in an inclined smooth tube. Part I: Inclination effect on flow pattern and heat transfer coefficient

An experimental study of convective condensation of R134a in an 8.38 mm inner diameter smooth tube in inclined orientations is presented. This article, being the first of a two-part paper (the second part concentrates on the pressure drops and void fractions), presents flow patterns and heat transfer coefficients during condensation for different mass fluxes and vapour qualities for the whole range of inclination angles (from vertical downwards to vertical upwards). The results were compared with three flow pattern maps available in literature. It was found that for low mass fluxes and/or low vapour qualities, the flow pattern is strongly dependent on the inclination angle whereas it remains annular for high mass fluxes and high vapour qualities, whatever the tube orientation. The models of flow pattern maps available in the literature did not predict the experimental data well. In the inclination-dependent zone, experiments showed that there is an optimum inclination angle that leads to the highest heat transfer coefficient for downward flow. The heat transfer coefficient is strongly affected by the liquid and vapour distributions and especially by the liquid thickness at the bottom of the tube for stratified flows. Thus developing a mechanistic model of flow pattern maps is the first step in achieving a predictive tool for the heat transfer coefficient in convective condensation in inclined tubes.     

Effect of tube diameter on boiling heat transfer of R-134a in horizontal small-diameter tubes

The boiling heat transfer of refrigerant R-134a flow in horizontal small-diameter tubes with inner diameter of 0.51, 1.12, and 3.1 mm was experimentally investigated. Local heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop were measured for a heat flux ranging from 5 to 39 kW/m², mass flux from 150 to 450 kg/m² s, evaporating temperature from 278.15 to 288.15 K, and inlet vapor quality from 0 to 0.2. Flow patterns were observed by using a high-speed video camera through a sight glass at the entrance of an evaporator. Results showed that with decreasing tube diameter, the local heat transfer coefficient starts decreasing at lower vapor quality. Although the effect of mass flux on the local heat transfer coefficient decreased with decreasing tube diameter, the effect of heat flux was strong in all three tubes. The measured pressure drop for the 3.1-mm-ID tube agreed well with that predicted by the Lockhart–Martinelli correlation, but when the inner tube diameter was 0.51 mm, the measured pressure drop agreed well with that predicted by the homogenous pressure drop model. With decreasing tube diameter, the flow inside a tube approached homogeneous flow. The contribution of forced convective evaporation to the boiling heat transfer decreases with decreasing the inner tube diameter.     

New flow boiling heat transfer model and flow pattern map for carbon dioxide evaporating inside horizontal tubes

A new flow boiling heat transfer model and a new flow pattern map based on the flow boiling heat transfer mechanisms for horizontal tubes have been developed specifically for CO₂. Firstly, a nucleate boiling heat transfer correlation incorporating the effects of reduced pressure and heat flux at low vapor qualities has been proposed for CO₂. Secondly, a nucleate boiling heat transfer suppression factor correlation incorporating liquid film thickness and tube diameters has been proposed based on the flow boiling heat transfer mechanisms so as to capture the trends in the flow boiling heat transfer data. In addition, a dryout inception correlation has been developed. Accordingly, the heat transfer correlation in the dryout region has been modified. In the new flow pattern map, an intermittent flow to annular flow transition criterion and an annular flow to dryout region transition criterion have been proposed based on the changes in the flow boiling heat transfer trends. The flow boiling heat transfer model predicts 75.5% of all the CO₂ database within ±30%. The flow boiling heat transfer model and the flow pattern map are applicable to a wide range of conditions: tube diameters (equivalent diameters for non-circular channels) from 0.8 to 10 mm, mass velocities from 170 to 570 kg/m² s, heat fluxes from 5 to 32 kW/m² and saturation temperatures from −28 to 25 °C (reduced pressures from 0.21 to 0.87).     

Deterioration of heat transfer to supercritical helium at 2·5 atmospheres

Heat transfer has been investigated for supercritical helium at 2·5 atm flowing inside a vertical tube with inlet bulk fluid temperatures less than the transposed critical temperature. Results indicate that for high heat flux conditions, the heat-transfer coefficient passes through a maximum and then deteriorates as the fluid temperature approaches the transposed critical temperature. This is contrary to the predictions of a correlation developed in an earlier study of supercritical helium heat transfer under low heat flux conditions, which only predicts enhancement in heat transfer as the transposed critical temperature is approached.The experimental data are presented and conditions under which heat-transfer deterioration was observed are discussed. The probable limitations to the validity of the above mentioned heat-transfer coefficient correlation, developed for a different range of experimental data, are also discussed.     

A comparison of flow boiling heat-transfer in in-line mini pin fin and plane channel flows

The use of a boiling fluid as a coolant is an attractive option for electronic devices as electrical power densities increase. However, for systems working at the micro-scale, design methods developed for evaluating heat transfer in macro-scale evaporators are not appropriate for passages with hydraulic diameter of the order of 1 mm and below.Heat-transfer coefficients and pressure drops are reported for two surfaces, a pin-fin and a plate surface, each with 50 mm square base area. The pin-fin surface comprised of 1 mm square pin fins that were 1 mm high and located on a 2 mm square pitch array covering the base. The channel was 1 mm high and had a glass top plate. The data were produced while boiling R113 at atmospheric pressure. For both surfaces, the mass flux range was 50–250 kg/m²s and the heat flux range was 5–140 kW/m². The results obtained have been compared with standard correlations for tube bundles.The measured heat-transfer coefficients for the pin-fin surface are slightly higher than those for the plate surface. Both are dependent on heat flux and reasonably independent of mass flux and vapour quality. Thus, heat transfer is probably dominated by nucleate boiling and is increased by the pin fins due to the increase in area and heat-transfer coefficient. The pin-fin pressure drops were typically 7 times larger than the plate values.The pin-fin heat-transfer coefficients and pressure drops are compared to macro-scale tube bundle correlations. At low vapour qualities the heat-transfer coefficients are in reasonable agreement with the correlations, but, as the vapour quality increases, they do not show the convective enhancement which would be expected for a conventionally-sized tube bundle. Measured two–phase pressure drops are in reasonable agreement with the tube bundle correlation.     

The Effect of a Number of Baffles on the Performance of Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchangers

The number of baffles has an impact on the thermal-hydraulic performance of a shell-and-tube heat exchanger (STHX), thus a model was developed using Engineering Equations Solver software to solve the governing equations. The program uses Kern, Bell-Delaware, and flow-stream analysis (Wills Johnston) methods to predict both the heat-transfer coefficient and pressure drop on the shell side of an STHX. It was found that Bell-Delaware method is the most accurate method when compared with the experimental results. The effect of a number of baffles, mass flow rate, tube layout, fluid properties and baffle cut were investigated. The analysis revealed that an increase in the number of baffles increases both the heat-transfer coefficient and pressure drop on the shell-side. Increasing the mass flow rate, the heat transfer coefficient increases; however, the pressure drop increases at a higher rate. For a large number of baffles, the pressure drop decreases with an increase in the baffle cut. It also shows that the heat transfer coefficient increases at a higher rate with the square tube layout, whereas the rotated square and triangular layouts have approximately the same behavior.     

Flow pattern transition instability during flow boiling in a single microchannel

We studied the unique characteristics of flow boiling in a single microchannel, including the periodic pressure drop, mass flow rate, and temperature fluctuations, in terms of a long time period. Experiments were conducted using a single horizontal microchannel and deionized water to study boiling instabilities at very small mass and heat flow rate conditions. A Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) rectangular single microchannel had a hydraulic diameter of 103.5 μm and a length of 40 mm. A series of piecewise serpentine platinum microheaters were fabricated on the inner bottom wall of the rectangular microchannel to supply thermal energy to the test fluid. Real-time flow visualizations of the flow pattern inside the microchannel were performed simultaneously with measurements of the experimental parameters. Tests were performed for mass fluxes of 170 and 360 kg/m² s and heat fluxes of 200–530 kW/m². The test results showed that the heated wall temperature, pressure drop, and mass flux all fluctuated with a long period and large amplitude. These periodic fluctuations exactly matched the transition of two alternating flow patterns inside the microchannel: a bubbly/slug flow and an elongated slug/semi-annular flow. Therefore, the flow pattern transition instability in the single microchannel caused a cyclic behavior of the wall temperature, pressure drop, and mass flux, and this behavior had a very long period (100–200 s) and large amplitude.     

Numerical simulation and performance analysis of horizontal-tube falling-film evaporators in seawater desalination

A comprehensive distributed parameter model for simulating the steady-state performance of a practical horizontal-tube falling-film evaporator has been developed and validated. This model is capable of predicting the distributions of thermal parameters in the tube-side and shell-side, which provide important information of heat and mass exchange processes. The fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics in tubes are analyzed in detail. The computational time is reduced significantly in comparison with the Computational Fluid Dynamics. Based on the numerical results, it is found that the steam is not evenly distributed in the horizontal tubes of each tube pass, which is favorable for parallel channels with uneven heat fluxes. The mass and heat flux of steam are mutually matched, indicating that the self-compensation characteristic appears among the tubes. In addition, the overall heat transfer coefficient reaches the maximum value of about 3300 W/m² K at the entrance region of each tube pass, and then decreases gradually along the flow direction. As liquid film falls downward from tube to tube, the liquid flow rate of seawater continually decreases from 0.063 kg/ms to 0.04 kg/ms with the corresponding salinity gradually increasing from 36 g/kg to 56 g/kg.     

Numerical Investigation of Conjugate Heat Transfer to Supercritical CO2 in a Vertical Tube-in-Tube Heat Exchanger

Conjugate heat transfer to supercritical CO₂ in a vertical tube-in-tube heat exchanger was numerically investigated. The results demonstrate that most models considered are able to reproduce the heat transfer processes qualitatively, and the Abe, Kondoh, and Nagano model shows optimal agreement with the experimental data. The influences of hot fluid mass flux and temperature of the shell side, supercritical fluid mass flux of the tube side, flow direction, and pipe diameter on conjugate heat transfer were investigated based on velocity and turbulence fields. It is concluded that hot fluid mass flux and temperature of the shell side significantly affect heat transfer of the tube side. Mixed convection is the main heat transfer mechanism for the supercritical CO₂ conjugate heat transfer process when the inner diameter of the tube is greater than 1 mm. In addition, density variation is highly significant for heat transfer of supercritical CO₂ while high viscosity hinders the distortion of the flow field and reduces deterioration in heat transfer.     

Boiling heat transfer and dryout phenomenon of CO2 in a horizontal smooth tube

Evaporation heat transfer characteristics of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in a horizontal tube are experimentally investigated. The test tube has an inner diameter of 6.0 mm, a wall thickness of 1.0 mm, and a length of 1.4 m. Experiments are conducted at saturation temperatures of 5 and 10 °C, mass fluxes from 170 to 320 kg/m² s and heat fluxes from 10 to 20 kW/m². Partial dryout of CO₂ occurs at a lower quality as compared to the conventional refrigerants due to a higher bubble growth within the liquid film and a higher liquid droplet entrainment, resulting a rapid decrease of heat transfer coefficients. The effects of mass flux, heat flux, and evaporating temperature are explained by introducing unique properties of CO₂, flow patterns, and dryout phenomenon. In addition, the heat transfer coefficient of CO₂ is on average 47% higher than that of R134a at the same operating conditions. The Gungor and Winterton correlation shows poor prediction of the boiling heat transfer coefficient of CO₂ at low mass flux, while it yields good estimation at high mass flux.