Crude Oil Cooling in a Finned Tube Heat Exchanger

Description

Crude Oil Cooling in a Finned Tube Heat Exchanger, CFD Simulation ANSYS Fluent Training

The present simulation is about the cooling of crude oil in a heat exchanger via ANSYS Fluent. In this project, a heat exchanger is designed with a central tube and several parallel plates.

The flow of crude oil enters the central pipe at a speed of 2 m.s^-1 and a temperature of 200 C, and the flow of outside air moves at a speed of 0.3 m.s^-1 and a temperature of 25 C towards the central pipe.

The temperature difference between the pipe and the external current leads to heat transfer, and the presence of parallel plates made of copper also contributes to the heat transfer process.

Geometry & Mesh

The present geometry is designed in a 3D model via Design Modeler. The computational zone is the interior space of a heat exchanger. In this heat exchanger, a central tube and several rows of parallel plates perpendicular to the pipe are designed.

The mesh of the present model has been done via ANSYS Meshing. Mesh is done unstructured, and the number of production cells is equal to 5945156.

Set-up & Solution

Assumptions used in this simulation  :

• Pressure-based solver is used.
• The present simulation is steady.
• The effect of gravity is ignored.

 

Models
Viscous		k-epsilon
	k-epsilon model	realizable
	near wall treatment	enhanced wall treatment
Energy		On
Boundary conditions
Inlet (external)		Velocity  Inlet
	velocity magnitude	2 m.s-1
	temperature	25 C
Inlet (internal)		Velocity  Inlet
	velocity magnitude	0.3 m.s-1
	temperature	200 C
Walls		Wall
	wall motion	stationary wall
	thermal condition	coupled
Outlet (internal)		Pressure Outlet
	gauge pressure	0 pascal
Outlet (internal)		Pressure Outlet
	gauge pressure	0 pascal
Methods
Pressure-Velocity Coupling		SIMPLE
	pressure	second-order
	momentum	second-order upwind
	energy	second-order upwind
	turbulent kinetic energy	first-order upwind
	turbulent dissipation rate	first-order upwind
Initialization
Initialization methods		standard
	gauge pressure	0 pascal
	velocity (x,y,z)	0 m.s-1
	temperature	30 C

Crude Oil Cooling in a Heat Exchanger Results

After calculation, 2D and 3D contours related to temperature, pressure, and velocity are obtained.

The contours show that heat transfer occurs between the crude oil flow inside the pipe and the outside airflow, causing the crude oil to cool inside the tube.

You can obtain Geometry & Mesh file and a comprehensive Training Movie that presents how to solve the problem and extract all desired results.