Critical Mass Flow Rate Through Capillary Tubes

Author(s):  
A. Nouri-Borujerdi ◽  
P. Javidmand

This paper presented a numerical study that predicts critical mass flow rate, pressure, vapor quality, and void fraction along a very long tube with small diameter or capillary tub under critical condition by the drift flux model. Capillary tubes are simple expansion devices and are necessary to design and optimization of refrigeration systems. Using dimensional analysis by Buckingham’s π theory, some generalized correlations are proposed for prediction of flow parameters as functions of flow properties and tube sizes under various critical conditions. This study is performed under the inlet pressure in the range of 0.8 ≤ pin ≤ 1.5Mpa, subcooling temperature between 0 ≤ ΔTsub ≤ 10 °C. The tube diameter is in the range of 0.5 ≤ D ≤ 1.5mm and tube length between 1 ≤ L ≤ 2m for water, ammonia, refrigerants R-12, R-22 and R-134 as working fluids. Comparison between the results of the present work and some experimental data indicates a good agreement. Cluster of data close to the fitted curves also shows satisfactory results.

2014 ◽  
Vol 960-961 ◽  
pp. 643-647
Author(s):  
Yan Sheng Xu

A stepped capillary tube consisting of two serially connected capillary tubes with different diameters is invented to replace the conventional expansion device. The mass flow rate of refrigerant R410A in stepped capillary tubes with different size were tested. The model of stepped capillary tube is proposed, and its numerical algorithm for tube length and mass flow rate is developed. The experimental results show that the performance comparing between stepped capillary tube system and capillary tube assembly system, the cooling capacity is reduced by 0.3%, the energy efficiency ratio (EER) is equal to each other, the heating capacity is increased by 0.3%, the coefficient of performance (COP) is decreased by 0.3%. That is to say, the performance index of the two kinds of throttle mechanism is almost identical. It indicates that the stepped capillary tube can replace the capillary tube assembly in the R410A heat pump type air conditioner absolutely. The model is validated with experimental data, and the results show that the model can be used for sizing and rating stepped capillary tube.


1996 ◽  
Vol 118 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuncay Yilmaz ◽  
Saban U¨nal

Capillary tubes are used widely in small refrigeration systems. It is necessary to design the capillary tube, but there does not exist any analytical equation which allows the determination of capillary tube length or mass flow rate for all refrigerants. In this work, an analytical equation is derived which allows to design the capillary tubes. The comparison with existing methods and experimentally obtained values using the refrigerants R12, R22, R113, R114, R134a, and R600a has turned out to be satisfactory.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (04) ◽  
pp. 1450022 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHI ZHANG ◽  
YING WANG ◽  
JIANGPING CHEN

Mal-distribution of refrigerant in a cross-flow type evaporator with parallel paths is very important, which can lead to a loss of heat exchanger capacity to 25%. Distributors are used to balance the two-phase refrigerant distributions in each path. Apart from the structural factors, there are other factors influencing the performance of distributor greatly. In this paper, influences of several nonstructural factors on reservoir distributor are investigated experimentally under varied working conditions. The inlet tube configuration, installation orientation and capillary tube length are also studied. One experiment apparatus is developed to measure the refrigerant mass flow rate and the quality based on R410A air conditioner. It is found that influence caused by inlet tube before the distributor is small. The average STD is only 2.76%. Influence caused by orientation is broad. The average STD is less than 9% on the orientation of 15°. On the orientation of 90°, STDs of different conditions are all more than 40%. For orientation, mass flow rate sensitivity is larger than quality sensitivity. Capillary tubes with different length can be used to adjust distribution. Average STD with sizable capillary length difference is 9.47%. It means that only small mal-distribution can be adjusted by using different-length capillary tubes. Capillary tube length sensitivity increases with the increase of difference between outlet tubes or the decrease of average length of outlet tubes.


Author(s):  
S. F. Goh ◽  
S. Kusadomi ◽  
S. R. Gollahalli

The main purpose of this study was to comprehend the effects of burner diameter and fuel type on smoke point characteristics of a hydrocarbon diffusion flame and its radiation emission. The critical mass flow rate of pure fuel at this smoke point was measured. At nine different fractions of the critical mass flow rate, nitrogen gas was supplied along with the fuel to achieve smoke point. At each condition, flame radiation and flame height were measured. The axial radiation profile at the critical fuel mass flow rate for one burner was also measured. Three fuels of differing sooting propensities were used: ethylene (C2H4), propylene (C3H6), and propane (C3H8). Three different burners with inner diameters of 1.2 mm, 3.2 mm and 6.4 mm were used. Results showed that propylene had the highest critical fuel flow rate and the highest nitrogen dilution required to suppress smoking and total flame radiation, followed by ethylene and propane. For all fuels, the curves of nitrogen flow rate required for smoke suppression versus fuel flow rate exhibited a skewed bell shape. The variation of Reynolds number at the critical fuel mass flow rate with the burner diameter showed a linear relation. On the other hand, the variation of total flame radiation with burner diameter was nonlinear.


Author(s):  
Saad A. Ahmed

Centrifugal compressors or blowers are widely used in many industrial applications. However, the operation of such systems is limited at low-mass flow rates by self-excited flow instabilities which could result in rotating stall or surge of the compressor. These instabilities will limit the flow range in which the compressor or the blower can operate, and will also lower their performance and efficiency. Experimental techniques were used to investigate a model of radial vaneless diffuser at stall and stall-free operating conditions. The speed of the impeller was kept constant, while the mass flow rate was reduced gradually to study the steady and unsteady operating conditions of the compressor. Additional experiments were made to investigate the effects of reducing the exit flow area on the inception of stall. The results indicate that the instability in the diffuser was successfully delayed to a lower flow coefficient when throttle rings were attached to either one or both of the diffuser walls (i.e., to reduce the diffuser exit flow area). The results also showed that an increase of the blockage ratio improves the stability of the system (i.e., the critical mass flow rate could be reduced to 50% of its value without blockage). The results indicate that the throttle rings could be an effective method to control stall in radial diffusers.


Author(s):  
Hemant Kumar ◽  
Chetan S. Mistry

Abstract The Supercritical carbon-dioxide Brayton cycle main attraction is due to the Supercritical characteristic of the working fluid, carbon-dioxide (SCO2). Some of the advantages of using SCO2 are relatively low turbine inlet temperature, the compression work will be low, and the system will be compact due to the variation of thermodynamic properties (like density, and specific heat ratio) of SCO2 near the critical point. SCO2 behave more like liquid when its state is near the critical point (Total Pressure = 7.39 MPa, Total Temperature = 305 K), operating compressor inlet near critical point can minimize compression work. For present study the centrifugal compressor was designed to operate at 75,000 rpm with pressure ratio (P.R) = 1.8 and mass flow rate = 3.53 kg/s as available from Sandai report. Meanline design for centrifugal compressor with SCO2 properties was done. The blade geometry was developed using commercial CAD Ansys Bladegen. The flow domain was meshed using Ansys TurboGrid. ANSYS CFX was used as a solver for present numerical study. The thermodynamic properties of SCO2 were imported from the ANSYS flow material library using SCO2.RPG [NIST thermal physics properties of fluid system]. In order to ensure the change in flow physics the mesh independence study was also conducted. The present paper discuss about the performance and flow field study targeting different mass flow rates as exit boundary condition. The comparison of overall performance (Pressure Ratio, the Blade loading, Stage efficiency and Density variation) was done with three different mass flow rates. The designed and simulated centrifugal compressor meets the designed pressure rise requirement. The variation of mass flow rate on performance of centrifugal compressor was tend to be similar to conventional centrifugal compressor. The paper discusses about the effect of variation in density, specific heat ratio and pressure of SCO2 with different mass flow outlet condition. The performance map of numerical study were validated with experiment results and found in good agreement with experimental results. The change in flow properties within the rotor flow passage are found to be interesting and very informative for future such centrifugal compressor design for special application of SCO2 Brayton cycle. 80% mass flow rate has given better results in terms of aerodynamic performance. Abrupt change in thermodynamic properties was observed near impeller inlet region. Strong density variations are observed at compressor inlet.


Author(s):  
Sungho Ko ◽  
Yeon-tae Kim

A numerical study was conducted to predict the performance curve of a downscaled model of the main coolant pump for a sodium-cooled fast reactor and to reduce the head loss by the optimization of the diffuser blade. The ANSYS CFX program was utilized to obtain flow characteristics inside the pump as well as the overall pressure rise across the pump operating on- and off-design points. Computational domain was divided into several blocks to achieve high grid quality effectively and 7.5 million nodes were used totally to resolve small leakage flows as well as the flow inside the rotating impeller. The corresponding experiment was conducted to validate CFD computed results. The comparison between the CFD and experimental data shows excellent agreement in terms of mass flow rate and head rise on and near design operating points. The DOE (design of experiments) and RSM (response surface method)[1] were utilized to reduce the head loss by the diffuser blade in the pump. The diffuser blade was defined as four geometric parameters for DOE. The analysis of 25 cases was made to solve the output parameters for all design points which are defined by the DOE. RSM was fitting the output parameter as a function of the input parameters using regression analysis techniques. The optimized model increased the total pump head on the design point and the low mass flow rate point, but total pump head on 130% of operating mass flow rate was reduced than the initial model.


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