Analytical and Experimental Analysis of a High Temperature Mercury Thermosyphon

2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
André Felippe Vieira da Cunha ◽  
Marcia B. H. Mantelli

High temperature thermosyphons are devices designed to operate at temperatures above 400°C. They can be applied in many industrial applications, including heat recovery from high temperature air fluxes. After a short literature review, which shows a deficiency of models for liquid metal thermosyphons, an analytical model, developed to predict the temperature distribution and the overall thermal resistance, is shown. In this model, the thermosyphon is divided into seven regions: three regions for the condensed liquid, including the condenser, adiabatic region, and evaporator; one region for vapor; one for the liquid pool; one for the noncondensable gases; and another for the tube wall. The condensation phenomenon is modeled according to the Nusselt theory for condensation in vertical walls. Numerical methods are used to solve the resulting equations and to determine the temperature distribution in the tube wall. Ideal gas law is applied for the noncondensable gases inside the thermosyphon, while the evaporator and condenser heat transfer coefficients are obtained from literature correlations. Experimental tests are conducted for thermosyphon with mercury as working fluid, designed and constructed in the laboratory. The results for two thermosyphons with different geometry configurations are tested: one made of a finned tube in the condenser region and another of a smooth tube. The finned tube presents lower wall temperature levels when compared with the smooth tube. The experimental data are compared with the proposed model for two different liquid pool heat transfer coefficients. It is observed that the comparison between the experimental data and theoretical temperature profiles is good for the condenser region. For the evaporator, where two distinct regions are observed (liquid film and pool), the comparison is not so good, independent of the heat transfer coefficient used. In a general sense, the model has proved to be a useful tool for the design of liquid metal thermosyphons.

2017 ◽  
Vol 140 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hie Chan Kang ◽  
Se-Myong Chang

This study proposes an empirical correlation for laminar natural convection applicable to external circular finned-tube heat exchangers with wide range of configuration parameters. The transient temperature response of the heat exchangers was used to obtain the heat transfer coefficient, and the experimental data with their characteristic lengths are discussed. The data lie in the range from 1 to 1000 for Rayleigh numbers based on the fin spacing: the ratio of fin height to tube diameter ranges from 0.1 to 0.9, and the ratio of fin pitch to height ranges from 0.13 to 2.6. Sixteen sets of finned-tube electroplated with nickel–chrome were tested. The convective heat transfer coefficients on the heat exchangers were measured by elimination of the thermal radiation effect from the heat exchanger surfaces. The Nusselt number was correlated with a newly suggested composite curve formula, which converges to the quarter power of the Rayleigh number for a single cylinder case. The proposed characteristic length for the Rayleigh number is the fin pitch while that for the Nusselt number is mean flow length, defined as half the perimeter of the mean radial position inside the flow region bounded by the tube surface and two adjacent fins. The flow is regarded as laminar, which covers heat exchangers from a single horizontal cylinder to infinite parallel disks. Consequently, the result of curve fitting for the experimental data shows the reasonable physical interpretation as well as the good quantitative agreement with the correction factors.


2005 ◽  
Vol 127 (12) ◽  
pp. 1416-1421 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Gori ◽  
M. Borgia ◽  
A. Doro Altan ◽  
M. Mascia ◽  
I. Petracci

A submerged slot jet of air is used to cool an externally finned cylinder, heated by electric current. The cylinder ensemble is made of a stainless steel finned tube and a Teflon bar core inside. Five thermocouples, pressed inside the steel tube by the Teflon bar, measure the wall temperature to determine local and mean convective heat transfer coefficients. The local Nusselt number has the maximum on the impinging point and the minimum on the rear point. The variation of local and mean Nusselt numbers with the distance from the slot exit is investigated. Empirical expressions are proposed to correlate the experimental data. The cooling of a finned cylinder with a jet flow realizes a higher heat transfer as compared to a smooth cylinder.


1987 ◽  
Vol 109 (2) ◽  
pp. 388-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. M. Sparrow ◽  
M. A. Ansari

Measurements were made of the combined natural convection and radiation heat transfer from a horizontal finned tube situated in a vertical channel open at the top and bottom. In one set of experiments, both walls of the channel were heavily insulated, while in a second set of experiments, one of the insulated walls was replaced by an uninsulated metallic sheet. In general, the heat transfer coefficients were found to be lower with the metal wall in place, but only moderately. With the finned tube situated at the bottom of the channel, the differences in the heat transfer coefficients corresponding to the two types of walls were only a few percent. When the tube was positioned at the mid-height of the channel, larger differences were encountered, but in the practical range of Rayleigh numbers, the differences did not exceed 5 percent.


1981 ◽  
Vol 103 (4) ◽  
pp. 705-714 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Biery

A new method is presented to predict heat transfer coefficients for gas flow normal to smooth and finned tube tanks with triangular pitch. A transformation from the actual tube bank to an equivalent equilateral triangular pitch infinite smooth tube bank (ETP-I-STB) is made. A function of Ch(Ch = NSTNPR2/3NRe0.4) versus (Xt D0)Δ, ratio of transverse pitch to tube diameter for the ETP-I-STB, was developed. The Ch for the equivalent ETP-I-STP then applies to the actual tube bank. The method works with circular finned tubes, smooth tubes, continuous finned tubes, and segmented finned tubes with any triangular pitch. Also, fair predictions were made for in-line tubes with high Reynolds numbers.


1993 ◽  
Vol 115 (4) ◽  
pp. 998-1003 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. F. Peterson ◽  
V. E. Schrock ◽  
T. Kageyama

In turbulent condensation with noncondensable gas, a thin noncondensable layer accumulates and generates a diffusional resistance to condensation and sensible heat transfer. By expressing the driving potential for mass transfer as a difference in saturation temperatures and using appropriate thermodynamic relationships, here an effective “condensation” thermal conductivity is derived. With this formulation, experimental results for vertical tubes and plates demonstrate that condensation obeys the heat and mass transfer analogy, when condensation and sensible heat transfer are considered simultaneously. The sum of the condensation and sensible heat transfer coefficients becomes infinite at small gas concentrations, and approaches the sensible heat transfer coefficient at large concentrations. The “condensation” thermal conductivity is easily applied to engineering analysis, and the theory further demonstrates that condensation on large vertical surfaces is independent of the surface height.


Author(s):  
F. Gori ◽  
M. Borgia ◽  
A. Doro Altan

Experimental tests have been carried out to evaluate the heat transfer characteristics on an externally finned cylinder impinged by a jet flow of air. The cylinder is internally heated with an electric system. Thermocouples located inside the cylinder allow to evaluate the wall temperature distribution, in order to calculate the local and average convective heat transfer coefficients.


Author(s):  
Yantao Li ◽  
Yulong Ji ◽  
Katsuya Fukuda ◽  
Qiusheng Liu

Abstract This paper presents an experimental investigation of the forced convective heat transfer of FC-72 in vertical tubes at various velocities, inlet temperatures, and tube sizes. Exponentially escalating heat inputs were supplied to the small tubes with inner diameters of 1, 1.8, and 2.8 mm and effective heated lengths between 30.1 and 50.2 mm. The exponential periods of heat input range from 6.4 to 15.5 s. The experimental data suggest that the convective heat transfer coefficients increase with an increase in flow velocity and µ/µw (refers to the viscosity evaluated at the bulk liquid temperature over the liquid viscosity estimated at the tube inner surface temperature). When tube diameter and the ratio of effective heated length to inner diameter decrease, the convective heat transfer coefficients increase as well. The experimental data were nondimensionalized to explore the effect of Reynolds number (Re) on forced convection heat transfer coefficient. It was found that the Nusselt numbers (Nu) are influenced by the Re for d = 2.8 mm in the same pattern as the conventional correlations. However, the dependences of Nu on Re for d = 1 and 1.8 mm show different trends. It means that the conventional heat transfer correlations are inadequate to predict the forced convective heat transfer in minichannels. The experimental data for tubes with diameters of 1, 1.8, and 2.8 mm were well correlated separately. And, the data agree with the proposed correlations within ±15%.


Author(s):  
Vishal Ramesh ◽  
Sandip Mazumder ◽  
Gurpreet Matharu ◽  
Dhaval Vaishnav ◽  
Syed Ali ◽  
...  

A combined Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and experimental approach is presented to determine (calibrate) the external convective heat transfer coefficients (h) around a partially-filled water tank cooled in a climactic chamber. A CFD analysis that includes natural convection in both phases (water and air) was performed using a 2D-axisymmetric tank model with three prescribed average heat transfer coefficients for the top, side and bottom walls of the tank. The commercial CFD code ANSYS-Fluent™, along with User-Defined Functions (UDFs), were utilized to compute and extract temperature vs. time curves at five different thermocouple locations within the tank. The prescribed h values were then altered to match experimentally obtained temperature-time data at the same locations. The calibration was deemed successful when results from the simulations exhibited match with experimental data within ±2°C for all thermocouples. The calibrated h values were finally used in full-scale 3D simulations and compared to the experimental data to test their accuracy. Predicted 3D results were found to agree with experimental results within the error of the calibration, thereby lending credibility to the overall approach.


Author(s):  
Jiang Lei ◽  
Shiou-Jiuan Li ◽  
Je-Chin Han ◽  
Luzeng Zhang ◽  
Hee-Koo Moon

This paper experimentally investigates the effect of a turning vane on hub region heat transfer in a multi-pass rectangular smooth channel at high rotation numbers. The experimental data were taken in the second and the third passages (Aspect Ratio = 2:1) connected by an 180° U-bend. The flow was radial inward in the second passage and was radial outward after the 180° U-bend in the third passage. The Reynolds number ranged 10,000 to 40,000 while the rotation number ranged 0 to 0.42. The density ratio was a constant of 0.12. Results showed that rotation increases heat transfer on leading surface but decreases it on the trailing surface in the second passage. In the third passage, the effect of rotation is reversed. Without a turning vane, rotation reduces heat transfer substantially on all surfaces in the hub 180° turn region. After adding a half-circle-shaped turning vane, heat transfer coefficients do not change in the second passage (before turn) while they are quite different in the turn region and the third passage (after turn). Regional heat transfer coefficients are correlated with rotation numbers for multi-pass rectangular smooth channel with and without a turning vane.


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