Numerical Simulation of Gas-Liquid Two-Phase Flows on Wetted Walls

Gas-liquid two-phase flows on the wall like liquid film flows, which are the so-called wetted wall flows, are observed in many industrial processes such as absorption, desorption, distillation and others. For the optimum design of packed columns widely used in those kind of processes, the accurate predictions of the details on the wetted wall flow behavior in packing elements are important, especially in order to enhance the mass transfer between the gas and liquid and to prevent flooding and channeling of the liquid flow. The present study focused on the effects of the change of liquid flow rate and the wall surface texture treatments on the characteristics of wetted wall flows which have the drastic flow transition between the film flow and rivulet flow. In this paper, the three-dimensional gas-liquid two-phase flow simulation by using the volume of fluid (VOF) model is applied into wetted wall flows. Firstly, as one of new interesting findings in this paper, present results showed that the hysteresis of the flow transition between the film flow and rivulet flow arose against the increasing or decreasing stages of the liquid flow rate. It was supposed that this transition phenomenon depends on the history of flow pattern as the change of curvature of interphase surface which leads to the surface tension. Additionally, the applicability and accuracy of the present numerical simulation were validated by using the existing experimental and theoretical studies with smooth wall surface. Secondary, referring to the texture geometry used in an industrial packing element, the present simulations showed that surface texture treatments added on the wall can improve the prevention of liquid channeling and can increase the wetted area.

Tube Banks Heat Transfer Enhancement Using Conical Fins

In this work the heat transfer and pressure drop experimental results obtained in a two step finned tube bank with conical fins are presented. The tube bank had an equilateral triangle array composed of nine finned tubes with conical fins inclined 45 degrees in respect with the tube axis. The heat exchange external area of a single tube is approximately 0.07 m2. All necessary thermal parameters, inlet/outlet temperatures, mass flows, for the heat balance in the tube bank were determined for different air velocities, Re = 3400–18400, and one constant thermal charge provided by a hot water flow with a temperature of 80 °C. As a result, the correlations for the heat transfer and pressure drop calculation were obtained. The experimental results were compared against the analytical results for a tube bank with annular fins with the same heat exchange area. It was found that the proposed tube bank using finned tubes with conical fins shows an increment of heat transfer up to 58%.

Effects of Increasing Inlet Velocities and Side Port Air Injection on a Biomass Fluidizing Bed

Fluidized beds are being used in practice to gasify biomass to create producer gas, a flammable gas that can be used for process heating. However, recent literature has identified the need to better understand and characterize biomass fluidization hydrodynamics, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is one approach in this effort. Previous work by the authors considered the validity of using two-dimensional versus three-dimensional simulations to model a cold-flow fluidizing biomass bed configured with a single side port air injection. The side port is introduced to inject air and promote mixing within the bed. Comparisons with experiments indicated that three-dimensional simulations were necessary to capture the fluidization behavior for the more complex geometry. This paper considers the effects of increasing fluidization air flow and side port air flow on the homogeneity of the bed material in a 10.2 cm diameter fluidized bed. Two air injection ports diametrically opposed to each other are also considered to determine their effects on fluidization hydrodynamics. Whenever possible, the simulations are compared to experimental data of time-averaged local gas holdup obtained using X-ray computed tomography. This study will show that increasing the fluidization and side port air flows contribute to a more homogeneous bed. Furthermore, the introduction of two side ports results in a more symmetric gas-solid distribution.

Testing and Analysis of an Oscillating Hydrofoils Turbine Concept

A new concept of hydrokinetic turbine using oscillating hydrofoils to extract energy from water currents (tidal or gravitational) is presented, tested and analyzed in the present investigation. Due to its rectangular extraction plane, this technology is particularly well suited for river beds and shallow waters near the coasts. The present turbine is a 2 kW prototype, composed of two rectangular oscillating hydrofoils of aspect ratio 7 in a tandem spatial configuration. The pitching motion of each hydrofoil is coupled to their cyclic heaving motion through four-link mechanisms which effectively yield a one-degree-of-freedom system driving a speed-controlled electric generator. The turbine has been mounted on a custom-made pontoon boat and dragged on a lake at different velocities. Instantaneous extracted power has been measured and cycle-averaged for several water flow velocities and hydrofoil oscillation frequencies. Results are demonstrated to be self-consistent and validate our extensive 2D flow simulation database. The present data show optimal performances of the oscillating hydrofoils concept at a reduced frequency of about 0.12, at which condition the measured power extraction efficiency reaches 40% once the overall losses in the mechanical system are taken into account. Further measurements of power extraction with a single oscillating hydrofoil have also been performed by taking out the downstream hydrofoil of the tandem pair. Those measurements favorably compare, quantitatively, with available 3D CFD predictions. The 40% hydrodynamic efficiency of this first prototype exceeds expectation and reaches levels comparable to the best performances achievable with modern rotor-blades turbines. It thus demonstrates the promising potential of the oscillating hydrofoils technology to efficiently extract power from an incoming water flow.

The Histogram of Pressure Oscillations Amplitudes, in Lean Premixed Combustions, Caused by Thermo-Acoustic Instabilities

Lean premixed combustion is widely used in recent years as a method to achieve the environmental standards with regard to NOx emission. In spite of the mentioned advantage, premixed combustion systems, with equivalence ratios less than one, are susceptible to the combustion instability. To study the lean combustion instability, by experiments, one premixed combustion setup, equipped with reactant supplying system, is designed and manufactured in Amirkabir University of Technology. In this research, gaseous propane is introduced as fuel and several experiments are performed at nearly atmospheric pressure, with equivalence ratios within the range of 0.7 to 1.5. In this experiments fuel mass flow rate is varied between 2 and 4 gr/s. Unstable operating condition has been observed in combustion chamber when equivalence ratio is less than one. To distinguish the combustion instability for various operating conditions, probability density functions, spectral diagrams, and space distribution of pressure oscillations, along with Rayleigh Criterion, are utilized. Accordingly, effect of equivalence ratio on stabilizing the unstable combustion system is investigated. Moreover, convective delay time is calculated for all experiments and the results are compared with Rayleigh Criterion. This comparison has shown good agreement the experimental results and Rayleigh Criterion. Finally, stability limits are identified based on inlet mass flow rate and equivalence ratio.

Research on Two-Phase Flow Instability in Evaporator of Refrigeration System

As one kind of fluid machinery related to the two-phase flow, the refrigeration system encounters more problems of instability. It is essential to ensure the stability of the refrigeration systems for the operation and efficiency. This paper presents the experimental investigation on the static and dynamic instability in an evaporator of refrigeration system. The static instability experiments showed that the oscillatory period and swing of the mixture-vapor transition point by observation with a camera through the transparent quartz glass tube at the outlet of the evaporator. The pressure drop versus mass flow rate curves of refrigerant two phase flow in the evaporator were obtained with a negative slope region in addition to two positive slope regions, thus making the flow rate a multi-valued function of the pressure drop. For dynamic instabilities in the evaporation process, three types of oscillations (density wave type, pressure drop type and thermal type) were observed at different mass flow rates and heat fluxes, which can be represented in the pressure drop versus mass flow rate curves. For the dynamic instabilities, density wave oscillations happen when the heat flux is high with the constant mass flow rate. Thermal oscillations happen when the heat flux is correspondingly low with constant mass flow rate. Though the refrigeration system do not have special tank, the accumulator and receiver provide enough compressible volume to induce the pressure drop oscillations. The representation and characteristic of each oscillation type were also analyzed in the paper.

Large Eddy Simulations of Jet Flow Interaction Within Staggered Rod Bundles

The present work investigates the turbulent jet flow mixing of downward impinging jets within a staggered rod bundle based on previous experimental work. Two inlet jets had Reynold’s numbers of 11,160 and 6,250 and were chosen to coincide with available data [Amini and Hassan 2009]. Steady state simulations were initially carried out on a semi-structured polyhedral mesh of roughly 13.2 million cells following a sensitivity study over six different discretized meshes. Very large eddy simulations were carried out over the most refined mesh and continuous 1D wavelet transforms were used to analyze the dominant instabilities and how they propagate through the system in an effort to provide some insight into potential problems relating to structural vibrations due to turbulent instabilities. The presence of strong standing horseshoe vorticies near the base of each cylinder adjacent to an inlet jet was noted and is of potential importance in the abrasion wear of the graphite support columns of the VHTR if sufficient wear particles are present in the gas flow.

Numerical Simulation of Start-Up Jets in a Mixing Chamber

Numerical simulations of a transient flow of helium injected into an established background flow of nitrogen were carried out to identify the dominant features of the transient mixing process between these two dissimilar gases. The geometry of interest is composed of two helium slots on either side of a central nitrogen channel feeding into a ‘two-dimensional’ mixing chamber. Simulations were accomplished on both two- and three-dimensional grids using an unsteady DES approach. Results are compared with experimental measurements of species distributions. Unsteady 2-D solutions give a reasonable qualitative picture of the transient mixing process in the middle of the chamber and enable cost-effective parametric analyses and grid refinement studies. The 2-D solutions also provide quantitative estimates of representative characteristic times to guide the 3-D calculations. The 3-D solutions give a reasonable approximation to span-wise events.

Analysis of Turbulence in the Tip Region of a Waterjet Pump Rotor

A series of high resolution planar particle image velocimetry measurements performed in a waterjet pump rotor reveal the inner structure of the tip leakage vortex (TLV) which dominates the entire flow field in the tip region. Turbulence generated by interactions among the TLV, the shear layer that develops as the backward leakage flow emerges from the tip clearance as a “wall jet”, the passage flow, and the endwall is highly inhomogeneous and anisotropic. We examine this turbulence in both RANS and LES modelling contexts. Spatially non-uniform distributions of Reynolds stress components are explained in terms of the local mean strain field and associated turbulence production. Characteristic length scales are also inferred from spectral analysis. Spatial filtering of instantaneous data enables the calculation of subgrid scale (SGS) stresses, along with the SGS energy flux (dissipation). The data show that the SGS energy flux differs from the turbulence production rate both in trends and magnitude. The latter is dominated by energy flux from the mean flow to the large scale turbulence, which is resolved in LES, whereas the former is dominated by energy flux from the mean flow to the SGS turbulence. The SGS dissipation rate is also used for calculating the static and dynamic Smagorinsky coefficients, the latter involving filtering at multiple scales; both vary substantially in the tip region, and neither is equal to values obtained in isotropic turbulence.

Simulation of Hypersonic Viscous Flow Past a 2D Circular Cylinder Using Lattice Boltzmann Method

It is known that the Lattice Boltzmann Method is not very effective when it is being used for the high speed compressible viscous flows; especially complex fluid flows around bodies. Different reasons have been reported for this unsuccessfulness; Lacking in required isotropy in the employed lattices and the restriction of having low Mach number in Taylor expansion of the Maxwell Boltzmann distribution as the equilibrium distribution function, might be mentioned as the most important ones. In present study, a new numerical method based on Li et al. scheme is introduced which enables the Lattice BoltzmannMethod to stably simulate the complex flows around a 2D circular cylinder. Furthermore, more stable implementation of boundary conditions in Lattice Boltzmann method is discussed.