A numerical investigation on LNG flow and heat transfer characteristic in heat exchanger

The current article reports a numerical study on liquid natural gas (LNG) flow and heat transfer characteristic in heat exchanger at 0.6 MPa pressure condition. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code FLUENT was used to simulate the fluids flow and heat transfer characteristic in heat exchanger. The three-dimensional model of 1-2 heat exchangers was used to perform the numerical simulation. The numerical simulation of the current study was validated and compared with a reference data, indicating effectiveness-NTU and LMTD method. Therefore, the properties of LNG were calculated from NIST standard database 4 (SUPERTRAPP) versions 3.2. The variation effects of mass flow rate and heat transfer characteristic of the fluids were investigated. The numerical results show that the heat transfer coefficient increases with increasing the mass flow rate. Furthermore, the optimization of mass flow rate of fluids for vaporization process was reported in this study. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.