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Numerical simulation of water spray transport along a plate of a heat exchanger

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Abstract

Water spraying is widely being used in many industrial applications because of the benefits it has shown over cooling. This paper presents a numerical investigation to simulate evaporating water spray along a plate of an exchanger. Indeed, we were interested in a horizontal channel whose lower wall is the plate of the exchanger maintained at a heating flow. This plate is exposed to a turbulent airflow in which water droplets were injected. The equations governing the continuous phases (air) and the dispersed phase (water) were developed. These equations were solved using Comsol Multiphysics. A comparison of the simulation results and those of the experiment reveals an acceptable concordance. Therefore, the numerical results present the thermal behavior by studying transversal and longitudinal evolution of temperature. Moreover, the maximum evaporated water flow (mmaxew) and the plate temperature are investigated for several physical parameters of the continuous phase, such as velocity, relative humidity and inlet temperature. The results show that these parameters have significant impact on the cooling of the plate. In addition, mmaxew witnesses a remarkable decrease by increasing relative humidity. However, increasing air velocity and inlet air temperature could improve mmaxew.

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Abbreviations

a :

Vein length section (m)

b :

Vein width section (m)

C :

Concentration (kg m−3)

Cp :

Heat capacity (J kg−1 K−1)

d :

Diameter of the drop (m)

D :

Thermal diffusivity (m² s−1)

F i :

Droplet movement (kg m−3 s−1)

F d :

Drag force (N)

F g :

Gravity (N)

F p :

Pressure force (N)

h :

Heat transfer coefficient (W m−2 K−1)

h fg :

Latent heat of vaporization (J kg−1)

k :

Turbulent kinetic energy (m2 s−1)

kc :

Turbulent kinetic energy (m2 s−1)

m :

Droplet mass (kg)

Nu:

Nusselt number (–)

P :

Pressure (Pa)

q :

Flux de chaleur (W m−2)

q m :

Droplet energy (W m−3)

Re:

Reynolds number (–)

Sc:

Schmidt number (–)

Shd :

Sherwood number (–)

S m :

Droplet mass (kg m−3)

T :

Temperature (K)

t :

Time (s)

u :

Velocity (m s−1)

ε :

Turbulent dissipation rate (m2 s−3)

λ :

Thermal conductivity (W m−1 K−1)

μ :

Dynamic viscosity (kg m−1 s−1)

ρ :

Density (kg m−3)

σ :

Surface tension (N m−1)

τ :

Viscous stress tensor (kg m−1 s−2)

ϕ :

Volume fraction (–)

a:

Air

i, j, k:

Direction indices

p:

Water particles

s:

Saturation

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Energetics and Thermal and Mass Transfer (LETTM), Science Faculty of Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar, 1060, Tunis, Tunisia

    Nihel Grich, Walid Foudhil & Sadok Ben Jabrallah

  2. Faculty of Sciences of Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar, Campus Universitaire, 1060, Tunis, Tunisia

    Nihel Grich

  3. Faculty of Science of Bizerte, University of Carthage, 7021, Bizerte, Tunisia

    Walid Foudhil & Sadok Ben Jabrallah

  4. UVHC, LAMIH, Polytechnic University of Hauts-de-France, 59313, Valenciennes, France

    Souad Harmand

Authors
  1. Nihel Grich
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  2. Walid Foudhil
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  3. Souad Harmand
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  4. Sadok Ben Jabrallah
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Correspondence to Nihel Grich.

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Grich, N., Foudhil, W., Harmand, S. et al. Numerical simulation of water spray transport along a plate of a heat exchanger. J Therm Anal Calorim 143, 3887–3895 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-020-09356-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-020-09356-w

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