Heat transfer and exergy analysis of flow boiling evaporation in u-bend channel

Abstract

Abstract This study presents, a numerical method used to evaluate the exergy analysis of flow boiling evaporation of R134a in a U-bend channel using entropy generation criterion which is concerned with the degradation of exergy during the process due to irreversibilies (entropy generation) contributed by heat transfer and pressure drop. The simulations were conducted with the heat flux of 15 kW/m2, mass fluxes of 200-600 kg/m2s of R134a at the saturation temperature of 15 °C. Three(3) different geometries sizes of U-bend channel’s diameter 6, 8 and 10 mm with the bend radius of 10.2 mm were utilized. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) multiphase flow formulation was used in Ansys Fluent. The results show that the entropy generation increases with increase in mass fluxes due to irreversibilies contributed by the heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop as mass fluxes increase. Based on the size of the U-bend channel, the entropy generation was found to increase as the diameter of the channel increases. The numerical results were compared with the data in the open literature and there was a good agreement.