CFD Investigation of Gas Distributor on Flow Maldistribution in the Transfer Line Exchanger (TLE)

In this paper, flow characteristics of flow field in the entrance of the TLE were investigated by means of computer fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. A series of velocity vector and contour graphs of different cross-sections were achieved in the simulation. The simulation results indicate that gas maldistribution of the conventional gas distributor is very serious. Furthermore, after amelioration of the gas distributor frame, turbulence energy and turbulence energy dissipation rate are both decreased greatly, and the flow maldistribution parameter M is reduced from 0.0983 to 0.0475. From the analysis of the gas maldistribution, it shows that the effect of gas distributor configuration on flow maldistribution is prominent, especially, in the parallel to the inlet flow direction. And the optimized ellipticity of the elliptical cross-section shape of the modified distributor is 1.3. The conclusion of this paper is of great significance in the improvement of the flow field in the entrance of the TLE.