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An experimental study on influence of oily content on spray falling film flow and heat transfer properties over horizontal tubes in a sewage source heat pump

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Abstract

In the sewage source heat pump (SSHP) system, which is used to recover the low-level thermal energy in oily sewage, the sewage heat exchanger is an important equipment to determine the heat exchange efficiency of the system. In this paper, an oily sewage source heat pump (OSHP) system experimental setup with a spray-type sewage heat exchanger as the evaporator was established. The effects of oil content, spray density and spray temperature on the flow patterns between horizontal tubes and heat flux of tube were investigated and analyzed. It was found that the critical spray density for transformation from droplet flow to column flow was increased to 0.109 kg m−1 s−1 for oily sewage, which was much higher than 0.082 kg m−1 s−1 of pure water for pure water, indicating that a much higher spray density was needed to maintain a higher heat transfer for oily sewage. With the increase in spray temperature of oily sewage, the critical spray density of flow pattern transformation from droplet flow to column flow was decreased from 0.137 kg m−1 s−1 at 46 °C to 0.082 kg m−1 s−1 at 65 °C. Besides, oily sewage had obvious lower heat flux than pure water, and the difference was enlarged with the increase in spray density. New heat transfer correlations obtained depending on Re and Pr numbers were proposed, showing more accurate predictions than previously reported models. Corresponding to the falling film flow pattern, a clear dividing between 0.055 and 0.082 kg m−1 s−1 for pure water and between 0.082 and 0.109 kg m−1 s−1 for oily sewage, for the tube surface temperature distribution for droplet flow and column flow was observed, indicating the significantly high heat transfer for column flow pattern compared with droplet flow.

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Abbreviations

A r :

Archimedes number (–)

c p :

Specific heat capacity (J kg−1 K−1)

D :

Tube diameter (mm)

H :

Distribution height (mm)

l c :

Characteristics length (m)

Nuave :

Average Nusselt number (–)

Pr:

Prandtl number (–)

Q w :

Flow rate of spray fluid (m3 s−1)

Re:

Reynolds number (–)

t s :

Spray temperature (°C)

t out :

Temperature of falling fluid in the departure region (°C)

T w, θ :

Tube surface temperature at different circumferential angle (°C)

ρ :

Density (kg m−3)

θ :

Circumferential angle (°)

Γ :

Spray density (mass flow rate per unit length on each side of tube per unit time) (kg m−1 s−1)

σ :

Surface tension (kg s−2)

μ :

Dynamic viscosity

ν :

ν Is kinetic viscosity (m2 s−1)

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Acknowledgements

The study was supported by Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (No.: ZR2020ME170), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (No.: 52276092), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No.: 18CX02077A).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Gas Engineering, College of Pipeline and Civil Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, 266580, Shandong, China

    Jingyu Hao, Shuangshuang Meng, Zhihao He, Lin Zeng, Tianbiao He & Ning Mao

  2. Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Ning Mao

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  1. Jingyu Hao
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Contributions

Jingyu Hao and Zhihao He contributed to conceptualization; Jingyu Hao, Zhihao He, Shuangshuang Meng and Lin Zeng contributed to methodology; Jingyu Hao, Zhihao He and Shuangshuang Meng contributed to formal analysis and investigation; Jingyu Hao, Zhihao He and Lin Zeng contributed to writing—original draft preparation; Tianbiao He and Ning Mao contributed to writing—review and editing; Ning Mao contributed to funding acquisition; and Tianbiao He and Ning Mao contributed to supervision.

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Correspondence to Ning Mao.

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Hao, J., Meng, S., He, Z. et al. An experimental study on influence of oily content on spray falling film flow and heat transfer properties over horizontal tubes in a sewage source heat pump. J Therm Anal Calorim 148, 1047–1060 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-022-11752-3

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