Submerged combustion vaporizer optimization using Entropy Minimization Method

Abstract

Compact Submerged Combustion Vaporizers (SCVs) are in demand as increased number of natural gas powered engine is being installed for their high efficiency and high cost effectiveness. For improved performance of SCVs, optimization study is carried out using the porous media model and the Entropy Minimization Method (EMM) for two boundary conditions: constant temperature and constant heat flux. We identify heat transfer increase dominated regime at low particle Reynolds number and pressure drop dominated regime at high particle Reynolds number and find optimized points for the independently controlled porosity parameters and equivalent particle diameter: the number of fins and fin thickness or fin diameter, respectively. Through this study, we show that highly efficient heat transfer surface unit cell can be designed using the EMM analysis which is not limited to any specific geometry and such method can be used to optimize other parameters which affect the energy transfer effectiveness. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.