Effect of Moisture Content on Mixing Air With Water-Liquid Flowing Through Inverted U-Tube for Power Plant Condenser Applications

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for air/water-vapor and water-liquid two-phase flow mixing with condensation in a vertical inverted U-tube is presented in this paper. This study is to investigate the flow behaviors and underlying some physical mechanisms encountered in air/water-vapor and water-liquid mixing flow when condensation is considered. Water-liquid flows upward-downward through the inverted U-tube while the air/water-vapor mixture is extracted from a side-tube just after the flow oriented downward. The CFD simulation is carried out for a side air/water-vapor mixture volume fraction (αm) of 0.2–0.7, water-vapor mass fraction (Xv) of 0.1–0.5 in the side air/water-vapor mixture and water-liquid mass flowrate (mw) of 2,4,6, and 8 kg/s. The present results reveal that, at lower air mass flow rate, no significant effect of Xv on the generated static pressure at the inverted U-tube higher part. However, by increasing the air mass flow rates, ma ≥ 0.001 at mw = 2 kg/s, and ma ≥ 0.00125 at mw = 4 kg/s, we can infer that the lowest static pressure can be attained at Xv = 0.1. This may be attributed to the increased vapor and air mass flow rates from the side tube which results in shifting the condensation from the tube highest part due to air accumulation. This leads to increasing the flow pressure and decelerating the water-liquid flow. Raising mw from 2 to 4 kg/s at the same vapor mass ratio results in a lower static pressure due to more condensation of water vapor. The turbulent intensity and kinetic energy starts to drop approximately at ma = 0.002 kg/s, and αm = 0.55–0.76 at mw = 2 kg/s for all Xv values but no noticeable change at mw = 4 kg/s occurs. These findings estimate the operational values of air and water mass flow rates for stable air entrainment from the side-tube. Increasing the air and vapor mass ratio over these values may block the evacuation process and fails the system continuance. Likewise more air entrainment from the side-tube will decelerate the water flow through the inverted U-tube and hence the flow velocity will decrease thereafter. Moreover, this study reveals that the inverted U-tube is able to generate a vacuum pressure down to 55.104 kPa for the present model when vapor condensation is considered. This generated low-pressure helps to vent an engineering system from the non-condensable gases and water vapor that fail its function if these are accumulated with time. Moreover, the water-liquid mass flow rate in the inverted U-tube can be used to sustain the required operating pressure for this system and extract the non-condensable gases with a less energy consuming system. The present CFD model provides a good physical understanding of the flow behavior for air/water-vapor and water-liquid flow for possible future application in the steam power plant.