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ISSN Online: 2379-1748

ISBN Flash Drive: 978-1-56700-469-4

ISBN Online: 978-1-56700-470-0

Second Thermal and Fluids Engineering Conference
April, 2-5, 2017, Las Vegas, NV, USA

The Design on the Distributor of a Falling Film Evaporator

Get access (open in a dialog) pages 2583-2586
DOI: 10.1615/TFEC2017.itc.018317

Abstract

Owing to their characteristics of high heat transfer rate and low filling amount of refrigerant during the falling-film evaporative process, falling film evaporators have been used in chiller systems frequently to serve as heat exchanging facilities. Because the issues of energy shortage have drawn great attention in recent years, how to design various energy-saving facilities becomes an important topic nowadays. Current studies related to falling film evaporators are usually limited to two-dimensional flow simulations. However, the research related to three-dimensional transient flow simulations for full-scale or subscale distributors are scare in the available literature. To understand the distributing efficiency and the phenomena of flow field on the distributor, three-dimensional transient flow simulations were conducted using the ANSYS FLUENT with VOF (Volume of Fluid) multiphase model to predict the fluid behavior in a subscale distributor of a falling film evaporator in this study. The working fluid employed was refrigerant R134a. To find the optimal parameters affecting the distributing efficiency, Taguchi method was adopted in this paper. According to the numerical results, it is found that the concave angle of the distributor is the most significant factor to affect the distributing efficiency. Finally, the optimal combination to reach the best distributing efficiency is suggested as inlet orifices with the downward inclined angle of 25 degrees, the distributor with the hole size of 3 mm, the hole configuration of the distributor arranged as "Sparse to Dense", and the distributor with the concave angle of 5 degrees.