• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.1256-1261
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• 2009

Seawater amounts to 70% of the earth and represents a quite unlimited resource for the production of fresh water by desalination processes and for the extraction of dissolved salts present in it. Recently, the falling film evaporation has increased in interest as an efficient method for seawater desalination system. In the desalination system, the flow characteristics of the falling film is very important issue to make highly efficient system. So, this study is taken to investigate numerically the falling film thickness on the inlet Renold Number ranges are 400 to 700. Numerical simulations are performed using FLUENT6.3.26, a commercial CFD code.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.830-838
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• 2005

The present study investigated the optimization of the absorption performance of the vertical absorber tube with falling film by considering heat and mass transfer simultaneously. Effects of film Reynolds number, geometric parameters by insert device (spring) and flow pattern on heat and mass transfer performances have been also investigated. Especially, effects of coolant flow rate and the flow pattern by geometric parameters has been observed for the total heat and mass transfer rates through both numerical and experimental studies. Based on both predicted values, the optimal coolant flow rate was predicted as 1.98 L/min. The maximum absorption rate of the spring inserted tube was increased by the maximum of $20.0\%$ than those for uniform film of bare tube. Average Sherwood numbers and Nusselt numbers were increased as Reynolds numbers increased under the dynamic and geometric conditions showing the maximum absorption performance.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.431-439
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• 1998

Falling film absorption process is an important problem in application such as absorption chillers. The presence of waves on the film affects the absorption process significantly. In the present study the characteristics of heat and mass transfer in laminar-wavy falling film were studied numerically. The wavy flow behavior was incorporated in the energy and diffusion equation. The numerical solution indicated that the interfacial wave increased the transfer rates remarkably. Interfacial shear stress and wave frequency seemed to be the dominant factors on the film Nusselt number and Sherwood number in the wavy film. A comparison of the transfer rates of the wavy film to that of the smooth film showed that the mass transfer rate could be increased by more than 50%.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.14 no.10
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• pp.825-832
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• 2002

The present study investigated the enhancement of the absorption performance by the spring wrapped around the outer surface of the vertical falling film absorber tube. Heat and mass transfer enhancements were experimentally investigated, and flow visualization was performed to observe the wettability and flow pattern of the solution. The key experimental parameters were spring diameter (0.5, 1.0 mm) and spring pitch (1, 3, 10 mm), film Reynolds number (50~150), and concentration of LiBr-$H_2O$ solution (55, 60, 65 wt%). As the spring diameter was increased, the absorption mass flux, Sherwood number, Nusselt number, heat flux, and heat transfer coefficient were increased The Nusselt and Sherwood numbers showed the maximum at the spring pitch of 3mm, and the ratio of pitch to diameter of approximately 3 and 6 for the spring diamter of 0.5 mm, respectively.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.1756-1765
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• 2001

The heat and mass transfer process between the falling liquid desiccant(TEG) film and the air in counter flow at the dehumidifier of desiccant cooling system were investigated. The governing equations with appropriate boundary and interfacial conditions describing the physical problems were solved by numerical analysis. As a result, the effects of the design parameters and the outside air conditions on the rates of dehumidification and sensible cooling were discussed. The results of the dehumidification and sensible cooling rates were compared with those of the cross flow at the same conditions.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.25-32
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• 2005

Falling film heat transfer has been widely used in many applications in which heat and mass transfer occur simultaneously, such as evaporative coolers, cooling towers, absorption chillers, etc. In such cases, it is desirable that the falling film spreads widely on the surface forming thin liquid film to enlarge contact surface and to reduce the thermal resistance across the film and/or the flow resistance to the vapor stream over the film. In this work, the surface is treated to have thin porous layer on the surface. With this treatment, the liquid can be spread widely on the surface by the capillary force resulting from the porous structure. In addition to this, the liquid can be held within the porous structure to improve surface wettedness regardless of the surface inclination. The experiment on the evaporative cooling of an inclined surface has been conducted to verify the effectiveness of the surface treatment. It is measured that the evaporative heat transfer increases about $50\%$ by the porous layer treatment as compared with that from orignal bare surfaces.

• International Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.99-106
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• 2005

Falling film heat transfer has been widely used in many applications in which heat and mass transfer occur simultaneously, such as evaporative coolers, cooling towers, absorption chillers, etc. In such cases, it is desirable that the falling film spreads widely on the surface to form a thin liquid film to enlarge contact surface and to reduce the thermal resistance across the film and/or the flow resistance to the vapor stream over the film. In this respect, hydrophilic treatment of the surface has been tried to improve the surface wettability by decreasing the contact angle between the liquid and the surface. However, the hydrophilic treatment was found not very effective to increase the surface wettedness of inclined surfaces, since the liquid flow forms rivulet patterns instead of a thin film as it flows down the inclined surface and accelerates gradually by the gravity. In this work, a novel method is suggested to improve the surface wettedness enormously. In this work, the surface is treated to have a thin hydrophilic porous layer on the surface. With this treatment, the liquid can spread widely on the surface by the capillary force resulting from the porous structure. In addition to this, the liquid can be held within the porous structure to improve surface wettedness regardless of the surface inclination. The experiment on the evaporative cooling of inclined surfaces has been conducted to verify the effectiveness of the surface treatment. It is measured that the latent heat transfer increases almost by $80\%$ at the hydrophilic porous layer coated surface as compared with the untreated surface.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.513-522
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• 2013

In the present work, a numerical study of a horizontal falling film evaporator in a multi-effect distillation (MED) plant is performed. Tube bundles in the evaporator are described as porous media, and a volume-averaged method is applied. To calculate the fluid flow and phase change in the evaporator due to heat transfer in the system, FLUENT and user-defined functions (UDF) are used. To observe the performance of the evaporator under different operational conditions, tests are conducted for a steam mass flux ranging from 0.5 to 2.5 $kg/m^2s$ in the horizontal tube, for mass fraction of the noncondensable gas in the tube inlet ranging from 0% to 1%, and for film Reynolds numbers ranging from 100 to 1,000 for the falling film. The evaporation rate increases with the steam mass flux and Reynolds number. In contrast, the evaporation rate decreases by 0.87% with a 1% increase in the mass fraction of the noncondensable gas in the tube.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.11
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• pp.4329-4337
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• 2022

Jet impinging device is designed for decay heat removal on horizontal fuel rods in a low temperature heating reactor. An experimental system with a fuel rod simulator is established and experiments are performed to evaluate water film covering capacity, within 0.0287-0.0444 kg/ms mass flow rate, 0-164.1 kW/m² heating flux and 13.8-91.4℃ feeding water temperature. An effective method to obtain the film coverage rate by infrared equipment is proposed. Water film flowing patterns are recoded and the film coverage rates at different circumference angles are measured. It is found the film coverage rate decreases with heating flux during single-phase convection, while increases after onset of nucleate boiling. Besides, film coverage rate is found affected by Marangoni effect and film accelerating effect, and surface wetting is significantly facilitated by bubble behavior. Based on the observed phenomenon and physical mechanism, dry-out depth and initial dry-out rate are proposed to evaluate film covering potential on a heating surface. A model to predict film coverage rate is proposed based on the data. The findings would have reliable guide and important implications for further evaluation and design of decay heat removal system of new reactors, and could be helpful for passive containment cooling research.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2003

The objectives of this paper are to develop a new method of wettability mea-surement and to study the effect of surface roughness on the wettability in a $H_2O$/LiBr falling film absorber. Two absorber tubes with micro-scale roughness and a bare tube are tested in a falling film absorber installed in a test rig. Inlet solution temperature, concentration and mass flow rate are considered as key parameters. A new method is proposed to estimate the wettability of a tube by measuring a minimum mass flow rate to wet the tube completely. The wettability for the structured surfaces was higher than that for the bare tube. The wettability decreased linearly along the vertical location. The wettability increased with increasing the solution temperature and the solution mass flow rate. The experimental correlations of the wettability for the bare and the micro-hatched tubes were developed with error bands of$\pm20%\;and\;\pm10%$, respectively. This work can be used in the design of absorbers with micro-scale roughness.