Supersonic steam ejectors are widely used in many industrial applications, for example for refrigeration and desalination. The experimental evaluation of the flow field inside the ejector is relatively difficult and costly due to the occurrence of shock after the velocity of the steam reaches over the sonic level in the ejector. In this paper, numerical simulations are conducted to investigate the detailed flow field inside a supersonic steam (water vapor being the working fluid) ejector. The commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) flow solver ANSYS-Fluent and the mesh generation software ANSYS-ICEM are used to predict the steam performance during the mixing inside the ejector by employing two turbulence models, the k-ω SST and the k-ε realizable models. The computed results are validated against the experimental data. The effects of operating conditions on the efficiency of the ejector such as the primary fluid pressure and condenser pressure are studied to obtain a better understanding of the mixing process and entrainment. Velocity contours, pressure plots and shock region analyses provide a good understanding for optimization of the ejector performance, in particular how to increase the entrainment ratio.
- Fluids Engineering Division
CFD Simulation of a Supersonic Steam Ejector for Refrigeration Application
Su, L, & Agarwal, RK. "CFD Simulation of a Supersonic Steam Ejector for Refrigeration Application." Proceedings of the ASME 2016 Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting collocated with the ASME 2016 Heat Transfer Summer Conference and the ASME 2016 14th International Conference on Nanochannels, Microchannels, and Minichannels. Volume 1A, Symposia: Turbomachinery Flow Simulation and Optimization; Applications in CFD; Bio-Inspired and Bio-Medical Fluid Mechanics; CFD Verification and Validation; Development and Applications of Immersed Boundary Methods; DNS, LES and Hybrid RANS/LES Methods; Fluid Machinery; Fluid-Structure Interaction and Flow-Induced Noise in Industrial Applications; Flow Applications in Aerospace; Active Fluid Dynamics and Flow Control — Theory, Experiments and Implementation. Washington, DC, USA. July 10–14, 2016. V01AT03A006. ASME. https://doi.org/10.1115/FEDSM2016-7614
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