Experimental Study of Falling Film on the Outside of Horizontal Tube

Evaporating falling film on horizontal tubes has been widely used in desalinization, refrigeration, chemical process industries, and so on. In this paper, the flow characteristics of falling film outside horizontal tubes in horizontal air flows was studied theoretically and experimentally. Two low patterns of the falling film, i.e., droplet flow pattern and columnar flow pattern, were considered. Effects of the velocity of airflow, the flux of falling film flow, the external diameter of tube and the surface property of tube on the falling film flowing characters were investigated. Experimental study indicated that, in a definite flow scale, as the flow increased, the diameters of falling droplets and falling columns of the liquid enlarged, and the liquid film became thick and the area covered by the liquid film increased. As the air velocity increased, the offset of the droplet and the column to the top of the tube enlarged, and the rate of increase come down until it complete depart from the the top of the horizontal tube. Besides, a theoretical model was established about the offset of the droplet and liquid column from the top of the tube under the force of the horizontal air flows, and the model was validated by a comparison between the numerical predictions and experimental data. A further analysis about the excursion law of falling film flow outside horizontal tube was also made at the last paprt of the paper.