Novel approach for modeling a full-sized air-cooled heat exchanger using porous media and iterative processes

Abstract

Air-Cooled Heat Exchangers (ACHE) have gained importance through their extensive use in the oil and gas industry. Many researchers studied ACHE extensively and proposed analysis methods. Most of them investigate part of the ACHE in their modeling. Others consider only pressure drop in their calculations in simulating the porous media (fins and surrounding air). These assumptions lead to unprecise modeling results. In contrast to existing literature, by incorporating computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with real geometry design, this paper includes a study of a full-size ACHE with precise geometric measurements, commencing at the hot water's input and going all the way to the ACHE's exit through a U-path tube. By incorporating the complete geometry dimensions of the U-path tube length from the hot water inlet to the outlet, this methodology has the potential to produce more accurate predictions of temperature distribution, heat flow rate, logarithmic mean temperature difference (LMTD), and fin efficiency for each tube along the entire length of the ACHE. Further, unlike other works of literature, the porous media in this research includes calculations for pressure drops and heat transmission in place of real geometry design which gives more sensible and accurate modeling results. Moreover, a novel verification method is proposed by presenting an iterative process for verification of entire geometry design calculations by comparison with the Real Geometric Design. The incorporation of Real Geometry Design and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Code programs can lead to more precise and efficient methodologies for modeling air-cooled exchangers, offering valuable insights that can ultimately enhance their design and performance. In this work, the convergence with the actual geometrical design is less than 1%, demonstrating the superiority of the suggested strategy.