• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.702-715
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• 1990

This paper describes behaviors of two-phase open channel flow inside the flash chamber of a horizontal Multi-Stage-Flash evaporator numerically along with the experimental observations. Bubble trajectories and the velocity and temperature distributions of the liquid phase were predicted by using the particle-source-in-cell(PSI-Cell) method with the appropriate bubble motion/growth equations. Size and number of bubble nuclei embedded in the incoming liquid(brine) were taken into account as important parameters in addition to the conventional ones such as the velocity, degree of inlet superheat, inlet opening height, and the liquid level. Bubble motions, which are unsteady, appeared to be mostly determined by the buoyancy and the drag forces. The calculations, though a number of simplifying assumptions were made, reasonably simulated the hydrodynamic behaviors of the two-phase horizontal stream observed in the experiments. The simulated temperature distributions also agreed fairly well with the other's measurements. Non-equilibrium allownaces, evaluated from the simulated temperature distributions, were within the range of those obtained from the existing correlations, and reduced with the increases of the number and size of incoming bubble nuclei due to vigorous flashing.