Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1 Tarbiat Modares University of Tehran
2 Biosystems Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University (TMU), Tehran, Iran.
3 Biosystems Engineering Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University
Abstract
Concentrators have many functions, one of which is their use in the process of evaporation of liquids. Since high heat is present in concentrator-absorbers, it is possible to develop a heat exchanger system that allows the evaporation of salt water. One of the main components of these systems is the heat absorber, which is located at the focal point. In this research, an attempt was made to study two geometries of annular and hollow absorbers using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. For this purpose, the working fluid was defined based on the properties of seawater in Fluent Ansys software and the creation of geometry and thermal analysis were considered based on the initial and boundary conditions of the system. The results of the validation of the grid quality showed that the use of a tetrahedral grid with square grid order is suitable for the cavity geometry. Due to the dimensional symmetry of the geometry of the ring converter, the use of the simplest grid method leads to a high accuracy of the solver. The thermal analysis of the absorber showed that for the cavity geometry, the heat distribution at the bottom of the geometry is larger than at the top. The results of the Nusselt number change analysis showed the concentration of thermal stress in the liquid outlet region. This stress concentration leads to the shifting of the evaporation process from the inside of the chamber to the transfer tubes.
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