Abstract
During tanker transportation, crude oil is heated occasionally to ensure its good flowability. Whether the heating scheme is scientific or not directly influences the safety and economy of the tanker transportation. The determination of a scientific heating scheme requires fully understanding of the characteristic of oil temperature drop during tanker transportation. However, the oscillation caused by the marine environment leads to totally different thermal and hydraulic characteristic from that of the static cases. Therefore, a systematic investigation of thermal and hydraulic process of the motion system is more than necessary. Since the marine is subjected to rotational and/or translational motion, the essence of the temperature drop process is an unsteady mixed convection process accompanied with free liquid surface movement. In this study, the movement of the free liquid surface and the characteristic of the temperature drop of the crude oil in the cargo when the tanker is subjected to rotational motion were investigated using ANSYS FLUENT (15.0, Ansys, Inc., Canonsburg, PA, USA) with user defined functions. The research result shows that the oscillating motion leads to the motion of the free surface, converting the natural convection for the static case to forced convection, and thus significantly enhancing the temperature drop rate. It is found that the temperature drop rate is positively related to the rotational angular velocity.
Highlights
Crude oil, the lifeblood of the national economy, is the most important energy in the world at present and will be in the long future
Crude oil should be heated occasionally, which consumes a large amount of energy and discharges large quantities of pollutants
Making a scientific heating plan to heat the crude oil reasonably is the precondition to guarantee the normal operation of the tanker and to realize the energy saving and emission reduction
Summary
The lifeblood of the national economy, is the most important energy in the world at present and will be in the long future. The foreign dependence of crude oil exceeded 60% [1] for the first time, and is expected to reach 75% by 2035 [2,3]. In China, about 90% of crude oil import depends on tanker transport [4]. Crude oil should be heated occasionally, which consumes a large amount of energy and discharges large quantities of pollutants. Making a scientific heating plan to heat the crude oil reasonably is the precondition to guarantee the normal operation of the tanker and to realize the energy saving and emission reduction. Formulating the heating scheme requires fully understanding of the temperature drop characteristic of crude oil in the cargo during the Energies 2018, 11, 1229; doi:10.3390/en11051229 www.mdpi.com/journal/energies
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