Modeling of Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer in a Hydrothermal Crystal Growth System: Use of Fluid-Superposed Porous Layer Theory

1999 ◽  
Vol 121 (4) ◽  
pp. 1049-1058 ◽  
Author(s):  
Q.-S. Chen ◽  
V. Prasad ◽  
A. Chatterjee

Hydrothermal synthesis, which uses aqueous solvents under high pressure and relatively low temperature, is an important technique for difficult to grow crystalline materials. It is a replica of crystal growth under geological conditions. A hydrothermal growth system usually consists of finely divided particles of the nutrient, predetermined volume of a solvent and a suitably oriented crystal seed (Fig. 1) under very high pressures, generally several thousand bar. The nutrient dissolves at a higher temperature in the lower region, moves to the upper region due to buoyancy-induced convective flows, and deposits on the seed due to lower solubility if the seed region is maintained at a lower temperature. The system can be modeled as a composite fluid and porous layer using the Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer flow model in the porous bed. Since the growth process is very slow, the process is considered quasi-steady and the effect of dissolution and growth is neglected. This first study on transport phenomena in a hydrothermal system therefore focuses on the flow and temperature fields without the presence of the seed and mass transfer. A three-dimensional algorithm is used to simulate the flow and heat transfer in a typical autoclave system. An axisymmetric flow pattern at low Grashof numbers becomes three-dimensional at high Grashof numbers. A reduction in the porous bed height for fixed heated and cooled regions can result in oscillatory flows. These results, for the first time, depict the possible flow patterns in a hydrothermal system, that can have far reaching consequences on the growth process and crystal quality.

Author(s):  
Jinliang Yuan ◽  
Masoud Rokni ◽  
Bengt Sunde´n

In this study, a fully three-dimensional calculation method has been further developed to simulate and analyze various processes in a thick anode duct. The composite duct consists of a porous layer, the flow duct and solid current connector. The analysis takes the electrochemical reactions into account. Momentum and heat transport together with gas species equations have been solved by coupled source terms and variable thermo-physical properties (such as density, viscosity, specific heat, etc.) of the fuel gases mixture. The unique fuel cell conditions such as the combined thermal boundary conditions on solid walls, mass transfer (generation and consumption) associated with the electrochemical reaction and gas permeation to / from the porous electrode are applied in the analysis. Results from this study are presented for various governing parameters in order to identify the important factors on the fuel cell performance. It is found that gas species convection has a significant contribution to the gas species transport from / to the active reaction site; consequently characteristics of both gas flow and heat transfer vary widely due to big permeation to the porous layer in the entrance region and species mass concentration related diffusion after a certain distance downstream the inlet.


1998 ◽  
Vol 120 (4) ◽  
pp. 840-857 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Dyko ◽  
K. Vafai

A heightened awareness of the importance of natural convective cooling as a driving factor in design and thermal management of aircraft braking systems has emerged in recent years. As a result, increased attention is being devoted to understanding the buoyancy-driven flow and heat transfer occurring within the complex air passageways formed by the wheel and brake components, including the interaction of the internal and external flow fields. Through application of contemporary computational methods in conjunction with thorough experimentation, robust numerical simulations of these three-dimensional processes have been developed and validated. This has provided insight into the fundamental physical mechanisms underlying the flow and yielded the tools necessary for efficient optimization of the cooling process to improve overall thermal performance. In the present work, a brief overview of aircraft brake thermal considerations and formulation of the convection cooling problem are provided. This is followed by a review of studies of natural convection within closed and open-ended annuli and the closely related investigation of inboard and outboard subdomains of the braking system. Relevant studies of natural convection in open rectangular cavities are also discussed. Both experimental and numerical results obtained to date are addressed, with emphasis given to the characteristics of the flow field and the effects of changes in geometric parameters on flow and heat transfer. Findings of a concurrent numerical and experimental investigation of natural convection within the wheel and brake assembly are presented. These results provide, for the first time, a description of the three-dimensional aircraft braking system cooling flow field.


Author(s):  
H. X. Liang ◽  
Q. W. Wang ◽  
L. Q. Luo ◽  
Z. P. Feng

Three-dimensional numerical simulation was conducted to investigate the flow field and heat transfer performance of the Cross-Wavy Primary Surface (CWPS) recuperators for microturbines. Using high-effective compact recuperators to achieve high thermal efficiency is one of the key techniques in the development of microturbine in recent years. Recuperators need to have minimum volume and weight, high reliability and durability. Most important of all, they need to have high thermal-effectiveness and low pressure-losses so that the gas turbine system can achieve high thermal performances. These requirements have attracted some research efforts in designing and implementing low-cost and compact recuperators for gas turbine engines recently. One of the promising techniques to achieve this goal is the so-called primary surface channels with small hydraulic dimensions. In this paper, we conducted a three-dimensional numerical study of flow and heat transfer for the Cross-Wavy Primary Surface (CWPS) channels with two different geometries. In the CWPS configurations the secondary flow is created by means of curved and interrupted surfaces, which may disturb the thermal boundary layers and thus improve the thermal performances of the channels. To facilitate comparison, we chose the identical hydraulic diameters for the above four CWPS channels. Since our experiments on real recuperators showed that the Reynolds number ranges from 150 to 500 under the operating conditions, we implemented all the simulations under laminar flow situations. By analyzing the correlations of Nusselt numbers and friction factors vs. Reynolds numbers of the four CWPS channels, we found that the CWPS channels have superior and comprehensive thermal performance with high compactness, i.e., high heat transfer area to volume ratio, indicating excellent commercialized application in the compact recuperators.


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