THERMAL SCIENCE

International Scientific Journal

NUMERICAL MODELLING OF THE OPERATION OF A TWO-PHASE THERMOSYPHON

ABSTRACT
In the recent years, the interest towards the application of two-phase thermosyphons as an element of heat recovery systems has significantly increased. The application of thermosyphons is steadily gaining popularity in a wide range of industries and energy solutions. In the present study, a 2-D numerical modelling of a two-phase gas/liquid flow and the simultaneously ongoing processes of evaporation and condensation in a thermosyphon is presented. The technique volume of fluid was used for the modelling of the interaction between the liquid and gas phases. The operation of a finned tubes thermosyphon was studied at several typical operating modes. A parametric study over a non-ribbed and finned tubes thermosyphon was carried out. The commercial software ANSYS FLUENT 14.0 was used for the numerical analysis. It was proven that the numerical modelling procedure adequately recreates the ongoing flow, heat and mass transfer processes in the thermosyphon. The numerical result from the phase interaction in the thermosyphon was visualized. Otherwise, such visualization is difficult to achieve when only using empirical models or laboratory experiments. In conclusion, it is shown that numerical modelling is a useful tool for studying and better understanding of the phase changes and heat and mass transfer in a thermosyphon operation.
KEYWORDS
PAPER SUBMITTED: 2018-03-06
PAPER REVISED: 2018-10-06
PAPER ACCEPTED: 2018-10-09
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 2019-01-19
DOI REFERENCE: https://doi.org/10.2298/TSCI18S5311K
CITATION EXPORT: view in browser or download as text file
THERMAL SCIENCE YEAR 2018, VOLUME 22, ISSUE Supplement 5, PAGES [S1311 - S1321]
REFERENCES
  1. Ghazanfari, S. A., Wahid, M. A., Heat Transfer Enhancement and Pressure Drop for Fin-and-Tube Compact Heat Exchangers with Delta Winglet-Type Vortex Generators, Facta Universitatis - Series Mechanical Engineering, 16 (2017), 2, pp. 233-240
  2. Alizadehdakhel, A., et al., CFD Modeling of Flow and Heat Transfer in a Thermosyphon, International Communication in Heat and Mass Transfer, 37 (2010), 3, pp. 312-318
  3. Annamalai, A. S., Ramalingam, V., Experimental Investigation and Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis of an Air Cooled Condenser Heat Pipe, Thermal Science, 15 (2011), 3, pp. 759-772
  4. Fadhl, B., et al., Numerical Modelling of the Temperature Distribution in a Two-Phase Closed Ther-mosyphon, Applied Thermal Engineering, 60 (2013), 1-2, pp. 122-131
  5. Zhang, M., et al., Numerical Simulation and Experimental Verification of a Flat Two-Phase Thermosy-phon, Energy Conversion and Management, 50 (2009), 4, pp. 1095-1100
  6. Chaudhari, N. E., et al., Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis of Two-Phase Thermosyphon, Interna-tional Journal of Engineering and Technology (IJET), 5 (2013), Oct.-Nov., pp. 3794-3800
  7. Lee, C.-Y., et al., Numerical Simulation of the Heat Transfer Characteristics of Low-Watt Thermosy-phon Influence Factors, Journal of Applied Science and Engineering, 17 (2014), 4, pp. 423-428
  8. Hirt, C., Nichols, W, B. D., Volume of Fluid (VOF) Method for the Dynamics of Free Boundaries, Jour-nal of Computational Physics, 39 (1981), 1, pp. 201-225
  9. ***, ANSYS Fluent 14.0, Fluent Theory Guide

© 2024 Society of Thermal Engineers of Serbia. Published by the Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International licence