(245f) Calculation on the Heat Transfer

Correlations and Simulation Verification for

Typical LNG Open Rack Vaporizer

Open rack vaporizer (ORV) is a type of commercial heat

exchanger widely used in large gasification plants for
base load Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) receiving
terminal. The heat source is seawater which is abundant
and easily obtained. LNG in ORV is under supercritical
pressure, which means there is no phase transition
during the heat transfer progress, and the physical
properties change dramatically, directly influencing the
calculation. The aim of this study is to build a relatively
accurate model for quantitative calculation for the heat
transfer in ORV.
The whole block of the ORV is made of aluminum alloy.
The heat transfer tubes of the ORV are placed in a line
like a curtain, which are combined by means of the upper
and lower header pipes in a single unit that referred to as
a panel. There is a water spray device on the top of the
vaporizer, and the water sprayed flows from top to
bottom along the outer surface of the panel due to
gravity. Supercritical LNG flows from bottom to top
within the tube, during the progress the cold LNG
absorbs heat and gets vaporized by the heat transferred
from the seawater.
In order to achieve the localization of LNG vaporizers,
the heat transfer correlations and calculation methods
have been described and discussed for inside and outside
of the tube in a typical ORV, and the calculation results
are compared with the data of practical case. Meanwhile,
numerical simulation is established by FLUENT to verify
the heat transfer inside and outside of the tube.
The process where the heat transfers from seawater to
LNG through the tube wall comprises three steps: (1) heat
transfer from seawater to outer wall; (2) heat transfer
from outer wall to inner wall; (3) heat transfer from
inner wall to LNG. The heat transfer rate in the above
three steps is equal, thus the heat transfer coefficient of
the total process can be expressed by the formula
containing convective heat transfer coefficient of outside
and inside, and thermal conductivity of the wall.
Knowing the total heat transfer coefficient, the required
heat transfer area of the vaporizer can be obtained
through the temperature difference and heat transfer
quantity, which can be obtained by subtraction of
enthalpy of the appointed two states.
As the temperature difference of LNG between inlet and
outlet is above 100K, and that the physical properties
change dramatically near the pseudo-critical section, the
area is divided into multiple regions and calculated
separately in order to improve the accuracy. The final
required area is the summation of the areas of all
regions. The parameters of each region, such as
temperature, velocity and convective heat transfer
coefficient of LNG and water, can be obtained during the
calculation. Thus, the distribution of flow field in the heat
transfer tube can be presented.
LNG is a mixture of alkane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon
dioxide, rare gases, etc. As the main composition,
methane usually occupies 90% or more of LNG in volume
fraction. Therefore, methane is used to replace LNG in the
correlation and numerical simulation to simplify the
calculation. A number of heat transfer correlations are
adopted to optimize the calculation model: outside the
tube, three correlations are compared to calculate the
heat transfer of water; inside the tube, four correlations
are selected to calculate the heat transfer of methane.
Physical model is established for the numerical
simulation. The outermost layer of the tube is the falling
film by water, and the thickness of the falling film is
assumed 3mm which is obtained from observation of the
actual vaporizer in receiving terminal; the middle layer
is the solid structure of the tube made of aluminum alloy;
the innermost layer is methane.
ANSYS ICEM is conducted to generate the mesh as the
preprocessor of Fluent. Structured grids are established
and a local grid refinement method is applied in the near
wall region to improve the accuracy of the simulation.
The boundary condition for the methane inlet and water
inlet is the velocity inlet; the outlet boundary condition
for the methane and water is the pressure outlet. The
thermal condition of the outermost wall i.e. The interface
of water and air is set as convection. SIMPLE algorithm
is adopted for the pressure-velocity coupling in the
simulation, and the second order upwind scheme is
applied for the equations of momentum, turbulent kinetic
energy and turbulent dissipation rate.
Through the verification of practical case and numerical
simulation, the optimal correlations have been selected.
€œthe flat plate in parallel flow correlation” is
selected to calculate the heat transfer of water outside the
tube with the minimum deviation. The combination of
“d-B heat transfer correlation” for subcooled
section and “heat transfer correlation for
supercritical methane” for supercritical section has the
highest accuracy to calculate the heat transfer of
methane: the deviation for the methane temperature
along the tube is 1.63%, and for heat transfer coefficient
is 6.52%.
Effects of the inlet pressure of methane on heat transfer
progress are investigated in this study. Deviations of
temperature, convective heat transfer coefficient and
velocity of methane between correlation calculation and
numerical simulation in all working conditions are
within 15%. In particular, the deviations of temperature
are within 3% under different pressures. It can be
concluded that the data of correlation calculation are
fairly good agreement with the simulation data, and the
results are of high reliability. The heat transfer coefficient
decreases with the increasing pressure below the pseudo-
critical temperature, while the change of the heat
transfer coefficient is just the opposite above the pseudo-
critical temperature. The curve of the heat transfer
coefficient has a significant effect on the temperature. The
maximum value of heat transfer coefficient occurs near
the pseudo-critical temperature under different
pressures, and the heat transfer coefficient decreases
sharply near the pseudo-critical temperature, which
results in the curve shape of the temperature: the rate of
increase below the pseudo-critical temperature is much
larger than that above the pseudo-critical temperature.
Additionally, when the pressure decreases from 9mpa to
6.55mpa, the peak value of heat transfer coefficient has
increased by about 22.2%, but the variation of
temperature is not obvious. This is due to a significant
increase in specific heat near the pseudo-critical region
as pressure decreases. It also reveals that the outlet
temperature of methane increases from 257.3K to 271.2K
when the pressure increases from 6.55mpa to 9mpa. In
addition, the higher the pressure is, the larger the
methane density is. With the same mass flow, the velocity
gradually decreases with increasing pressure.
Effects of the mass flow of methane are also investigated.
The temperature along the tube rises more slowly with
the increasing mass flow, and the outlet temperature of
methane decreases from 271.8K to 235.5K when the mass
flow increases from 0.0178kg/s to 0.0637kg/s. In
addition, the heat transfer coefficient is significantly
improved by the increasing mass flow due to the
increment of turbulence effect, and the peak value almost
occurs at the same temperature. Higher mass flow also
means that the amount of heat absorbed by methane is
increased. It is apparent that the increasing heat
absorption capacity plays a major role in the process,
which gives a reasonable explanation to the temperature
curves: although the heat transfer coefficient is the
largest under the highest mass flow, the required heat is
also higher than the others, resulting in the gentlest
temperature curve and lowest outlet temperature.
Effects of the inlet temperature of water are studied at
last. The inlet water temperature has little effect on the
distribution of methane temperature. In particular, the
methane temperature has almost no difference in the first
half of the tube at different inlet water temperature. The
methane temperature increases with the increasing
water temperature in the latter half. The temperature
difference between methane and water is very large in
the first half of the tube, which is slightly improved by the
increase of water temperature, so it has very little effect
on the heat transfer. As the temperature difference
decreases, the effect of the elevated water temperature on
heat transfer becomes increasingly apparent. For every 5
degrees’ increase in inlet water temperature, the
methane outlet temperature increases by about 2
degrees.
Finally, the most accurate correlations and calculation
method are selected, through which the heat transfer
area of the ORV and the distribution of the temperature
field and the convective heat transfer coefficient are
obtained. In addition, the effects of different parameters
on heat transfer of the tube are also investigated to meet
the design requirement for effective LNG gasification.