CFD modeling of particle deposition in a hest exchanger tube

• Main Author: Safwan Bin Ahmad Kahar
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Particle deposition; CFD modeling

Particle deposition is a common problem inside the heat exchanger. This phenomenon cannot be eliminated completely but it can be mitigated. It leads to many negative impacts such as reducing the efficiency of the heat exchanger and hence affecting both economic and environment implications. This research is conducted to study the phenomenon of particle deposition inside the heat exchanger, its behaviour and also the parameters that can affect the rate of deposition. The study was conducted using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations in ANSYS Fluent software. This research considers a two-dimensional tube design and mesh independence study is conducted to get the ideal meshing for the domain. There is a gap between the results from the reference journal and the simulations due to several factors but the graph shows the same pattern. The research project continued with the parameters affecting the deposition and it is divided into three project cases. From the results, the bigger the particle mass, the lower the velocity magnitude and the larger the temperature difference between the wall and the bulk fluid lead to higher mass deposition. Deposition is not desired as it can introduce the thermal resistance between the wall and the bulk fluid thus reducing the heat transfer. Graphs and contours are included to further explain the correlation for each parameters towards the particle deposition. Mitigation of this phenomenon is necessary and many ways have been suggested inside this research