Numerical Investigation on Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Characteristics of Natural Circulation Loop with Parallel Channels

Abstract

The main objective of the present study is to numerically investigate heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics of natural circulation loop (NCL) with parallel channels. By imparting temperature difference to the fluid, the density gradient is developed which causes to circulate the fluid flow in a loop. In the current study, the steady-state analysis has been carried out on NCL with parallel channel at different power inputs. For this study, a three-dimensional geometry of NCL with parallel channel is developed and simulated using ANSYS-FLUENT 14.5. This kind of parallel channel NCL model would be useful in various heat transfer applications such as geothermal heat extraction, solar energy, electronics cooling, etc. The results of parallel channel NCL are compared to single channel NCL. The results show that the steady-state mass flow rate is increased by 17.26% and average Nusselt number is enhanced by 10.74% when compared to single channel NCL. All the simulation results are validated with open literature.