3D Numerical Study of Horizontal Falling Film Evaporator in Multi Effect Distillation (MED) Plant

In the present work, a numerical study of a horizontal falling film evaporator in a multi-effect distillation (MED) plant is performed. Tube bundles in the evaporator are described as porous media, and a volume-averaged method is applied. To calculate the fluid flow and phase change in the evaporator due to heat transfer in the system, FLUENT and user-defined functions (UDF) are used. To observe the performance of the evaporator under different operational conditions, tests are conducted for a steam mass flux ranging from 0.5 to 2.5 kg/m(2)s in the horizontal tube, for mass fraction of the noncondensable gas in the tube inlet ranging from 0% to 1%, and for film Reynolds numbers ranging from 100 to 1,000 for the falling film. The evaporation rate increases with the steam mass flux and Reynolds number. In contrast, the evaporation rate decreases by 0.87% with a 1% increase in the mass fraction of the noncondensable gas in the tube.