Experimentation and modeling of convective heat transfer coefficient for evaporation of liquid foods in a pilot plant double effect

Even though the evaporation is a common process in the food industry, there is scarce information about the convective coefficient evaluation as an important parameter for equipment and process design. A research on evaporation of sugar solution in a double effect was carried out. The experimental results obtained in this equipment, from the heat transfer and concentration processes are presented, a range of 2658–6091 W of heat flow was quantified implying computed values of 1431–3763 W/m2K for the convective coefficients and 1020–1815 W/m2K for the overall coefficient. The quantification of the convective coefficient, the fitting methodology and modeling were developed in order, to obtain the correspondent correlations. Then, from a set of several equations, two general relationships are proposed. Both correlations were applied to experimental and supposed data, finding a difference lower than 30% between the experimental and predicted values of the Nusselt number, that was considered as satisfactory.

CFD Simulation of Forced Recirculating Fired Heated Reboilers

An advanced algorithm has been developed in order to analyze the performance of re-boiling process of crude oil flowing inside reboilers tubes. The proposed model is composed from Heptane fire heater and a tube array. The heat flux produced from burner is transferred to the crude oil flowing inside the tube. The computational model is composed of two phases—Simulation of fire by using Fire Dynamics Simulator software (FDS) version 5.0 and then a nucleate boiling computation of the crude oil. FDS code is formulated based on CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) of fire heater. The thermo-physical properties (such as: thermal conductivity, heat capacity, surface tension, viscosity) of the crude oil were estimated by using empirical correlations. The thermal heat transfer to evaporating two-phase crude oil mixture occur by bubble generation at the wall (nucleate boiling) has been calculated by using Chen correlation. It has been assumed that the overall convective heat transfer coefficient is composed from the nucleate boiling convective coefficient and the forced turbulent convective coefficient. The former is calculated by Forster Zuber empirical equation. The latter is computed from the Dittus-Boelter relationship. In order to validate the nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficient, a comparison has been performed to nucleate boiling convective coefficient obtained by Mostinski equation. The relative error between the nucleate boiling convective heat-transfer coefficients is 10.5%. The FDS numerical solution has been carried out by using Large Eddy Simulation (LES) method. This work has been further extended to include also the structural integrity aspects of the reboiler metal pipe by using COMSOL Multiphysics software. It was found out, that the calculated stress is less than the ultimate tensile strength of the AISI 310 Steel alloy.

Numerical Analysis of Natural Convection and Radiation for Tube Solar Receiver With Glass Window

Conjugate laminar natural convection heat transfer and air flow with radiation of tube solar receiver with glass window were numerically investigated. The discrete ordinate method was used to solve the radiative transfer equation. And the three-dimensional steady-state continuity, Navier–Stokes, and energy equations were solved. The temperature difference based on environment and high temperature surface of receiver is varied from 100 K to 1000 K. The influence of the surface emissivity, heating temperature, convective coefficient, and convective temperature of environment on the heat transfer from the receiver with glass window has also been investigated. The numerical results indicated that the highest temperature of glass window increases and the high temperature area becomes wide, with the temperature of heating wall and surface emissivity increasing. Adopting higher convective coefficient of glass window can reduce the peak magnitude of temperature distribution on glass window of tube receiver up to 45%.

The Lumped Capacitance Model for Unsteady Heat Conduction in Regular Solid Bodies With Natural Convection to Nearby Fluids Engages the Nonlinear Bernoulli Equation

For the analysis of unsteady heat conduction in solid bodies comprising heat exchange by forced convection to nearby fluids, the two feasible models are (1) the differential or distributed model and (2) the lumped capacitance model. In the latter model, the suited lumped heat equation is linear, separable, and solvable in exact, analytic form. The linear lumped heat equation is constrained by the lumped Biot number criterion Bil=h¯(V/S)/ks < 0.1, where the mean convective coefficient h¯ is affected by the imposed fluid velocity. Conversely, when the heat exchange happens by natural convection, the pertinent lumped heat equation turns nonlinear because the mean convective coefficient h¯ depends on the instantaneous mean temperature in the solid body. Undoubtedly, the nonlinear lumped heat equation must be solved with a numerical procedure, such as the classical Runge–Kutta method. Also, due to the variable mean convective coefficient h¯ (T), the lumped Biot number criterion Bil=h¯(V/S)/ks < 0.1 needs to be adjusted to Bil,max=h¯max(V/S)/ks < 0.1. Here, h¯max in natural convection cooling stands for the maximum mean convective coefficient at the initial temperature Tin and the initial time t = 0. Fortunately, by way of a temperature transformation, the nonlinear lumped heat equation can be homogenized and later channeled through a nonlinear Bernoulli equation, which admits an exact, analytic solution. This simple route paves the way to an exact, analytic mean temperature distribution T(t) applicable to a class of regular solid bodies: vertical plate, vertical cylinder, horizontal cylinder, and sphere; all solid bodies constricted by the modified lumped Biot number criterion Bil,max<0.1.

Hybrid Mini/Micro-Channel Heat Sink Using Liquid Metal and Water as Coolants

The recent years have witnessed the tremendous development in electronics with high power density, such as highly integrated chips and high power LEDs. As a result, the continuous increase in power consumption of electronics is gradually leading to an urgent need for high performance cooling strategies. Among the existed cooling methods, liquid cooling has been proved to be a kind of effective cooling technology for the removal of a large amount of heat from high power devices. Traditional liquid cooling technique commonly refers to utilizing water as the coolant, which is low cost and owns a relatively higher specific heat capacity, however, lower convective coefficient. On the contrary, liquid metal owns much higher convective coefficient, however, lower specific heat capacity. In addition, the higher cost of liquid metal also limits its utilization with large quantity in electronic cooling areas. In this study, a hybrid mini/micro-channel heat sink, based on both of liquid metal and water, was demonstrated. The new system combines the advantages of the two coolants. Experimental studies were conducted to evaluate the capability of the cooling performances of the hybrid system under different operation conditions, including different flow rates, flow directions, pump failure and thermal shock. The experimental results indicate that the hybrid mini/micro channel heat sink owns better cooling performance than water-based heat sink.