Mostafa H. Sharqawy

On Thermal Performance of Seawater Cooling Towers

Seawater cooling towers have been used since the 1970s in power generation and other industries, so as to reduce the consumption of freshwater. The salts in seawater are known to create a number of operational problems, including salt deposition, packing blockage, corrosion, and certain environmental impacts from salt drift and blowdown return. In addition, the salinity of seawater affects the thermophysical properties that govern the thermal performance of cooling towers, including vapor pressure, density, specific heat, viscosity, thermal conductivity, and surface tension. In this paper, the thermal performance of seawater cooling towers is investigated using a detailed model of a counterflow wet cooling tower. The model takes into consideration the coupled heat and mass transfer processes and does not make any of the conventional Merkel approximations. In addition, the model incorporates the most up-to-date seawater properties in the literature. The model governing equations are solved numerically, and its validity is checked against the available data in the literature. Based on the results of the model, a correction factor that characterizes the degradation of the cooling tower effectiveness as a function of seawater salinity and temperature approach is presented for performance evaluation purposes.

OpenPNM: A Pore Network Modeling Package

Pore network modeling is a widely used technique for simulating multiphase transport in porous materials, but there are very few software options available. This work outlines the OpenPNM package that was jointly developed by several porous media research groups to help address this gap. OpenPNM is written in Python using NumPy and SciPy for most mathematical operations, thus combining Pythons ease of use with the performance necessary to perform large simulations. The package assists the user with managing and interacting with all the topological, geometrical, and thermophysical data. It also includes a suite of commonly used algorithms for simulating percolation and performing transport calculations on pore networks. Most importantly, it was designed to be highly flexible to suit any application and be easily customized to include user-specified pore-scale physics models. The framework is fast, powerful, and concise. An illustrative example is included that determines the effective diffusivity through a partially water-saturated porous material with just 29 lines of code.

Thermal Analysis and Optimization of Orthotropic Pin Fins: A Closed-Form Analytical Solution

Analytical solutions for temperature distribution, heat transfer rate, and fin efficiency and fin effectiveness are derived and presented for orthotropic two-dimensional pin fins subject to convective-tip boundary condition. The generalized results are presented and discussed in terms of dimensionless variables such as radial and axial Biot numbers (Bi r , Bi z ), fin aspect ratio, L/R, and radial-to-axial conductivity ratio k * . Several special cases are derived from the general solution, which includes the insulated-tip boundary condition. It is also demonstrated that the classical temperature distribution and heat transfer rate from the two-dimensional isotropic pin fin introduced earlier in literature can easily be recovered from the general solutions presented in this paper. Furthermore, dimensionless optimization results are presented for orthotropic pin fins that can help to solve many natural and forced convection pin fin problems.

Formulation of Seawater Flow Exergy Using Accurate Thermodynamic Data

Seawater is a complex electrolyte solution of water and salts with sodium chloride as the major constituent. However, the thermodynamic properties of seawater are considerably different from those of aqueous sodium chloride solution. In the literature, exergy analyses of seawater desalination systems have sometimes modeled seawater by sodium chloride solutions of equivalent salt content or salinity; however, such matching does not bring all important properties of the two solutions into agreement. Furthermore, some published studies attempt to represent sodium chloride solutions as a specific model for an ideal mixture of liquid water and solid sodium chloride, which is shown to have serious shortcomings. In this paper, the most up-to-date thermodynamic properties of seawater are compared with those of aqueous sodium chloride solution as well as the ideal mixture model. The flow exergy is calculated using various models and the results are compared. In addition, the minimum work required to desalinate a unit mass of fresh water from seawater of varying salinity is calculated using these models. The flow exergy calculated using the ideal mixture model in question is about 50% less than that of seawater. Accordingly, the minimum desalination work is underpredicted by about 50% when calculating it using that ideal mixture model. This consequently shows that exergy analysis and the second law efficiency calculations performed using the ideal mixture model is comparatively far from the actual values.Copyright

Efficiency and Optimization of a Straight Rectangular Fin with Combined Heat and Mass Transfer

An analysis was carried out to study the efficiency of a straight rectangular fin with a uniform cross-section area when subjected to simultaneous heat and mass transfer mechanisms. The temperature and humidity ratio differences are the driving forces for the heat and mass transfer, respectively. Numerical solutions are obtained for the temperature distribution over the fin surface when the fin surface is dry, fully wet, and partially wet. The psychrometric correlation of an air-water vapor mixture was used to simulate the relation between the temperature and humidity ratio instead of the linear approximate correlations used in the literature. The effect of atmospheric pressure on the fin efficiency was also studied, in addition to fin optimum thickness for specific operating conditions. The numerical solution was compared with those of previous studies in order to find if the linear model in the published analytical results are near to the real situation. It is found that the linear model for the relation between the humidity ratio and the temperature used by Wu and Bong is a reasonable engineering approximation for small values of the fin parameter and at low relative humidities.

Power Generation With Pressure Retarded Osmosis

Energy can be generated from two streams of different salt concentration using the osmotic pressure difference. Different methods have been proposed to harvest this energy. Pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) is investigated as a viable method and most promising technology. In PRO process, pure water permeates through a semi permeable membrane from the low hydrostatic pressure stream (feed solution) to the higher hydrostatic pressure stream (draw solution) due to the osmotic pressure difference. This increases the volume flow rate of the pressurized draw stream and energy is obtained by depressurizing the draw stream through a hydro turbine. In this study a one-dimensional computational model is developed to precisely estimate the power production under different operating conditions. Different feed and draw solution concentrations are used to estimate the power production from PRO. The maximum power density (power per unit membrane area), using available membrane characteristics, obtained from seawater–freshwater streams is 2.6 W/m2 and for the disposed brine–seawater streams is 9.1 W/m2. The performance of PRO process is very sensitive to the membrane characteristics in particular to the water permeability and PRO module configuration.Copyright

A review of hybrid desalination systems for co-production of power and water: analyses, methods, and considerations

Abstract The production of freshwater from seawater is a growing necessity throughout the world. In arid areas with high temperature and salinity seawater, thermal desalination and power plants (dual-purpose/cogeneration plants) are often employed for the production of power and water. In other areas, reverse osmosis is commonly employed. However, both technologies are inherently challenged with economic and performance issues. As a response to these issues, hybrid desalination, that is, employing both thermal and mechanical desalination methods, has been increasingly utilized over thermal desalination plants alone. In this article, an overview of thermal desalination, seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO), and co-generation of power and water is presented, specifically with regards to the motivation for utilizing hybrid plants, for example, process limitations and areas of potential improvement. In addition, a review of the considerations for design and economics of hybrid desalination plants is presented, for...

Heat Exchangers Design Under Variable Overall Heat Transfer Coefficient: Improved Analytical and Numerical Approaches

In typical heat exchanger design methods it is generally assumed that the overall heat transfer coefficient is constant and uniform; however, the heat transfer coefficients on the hot and cold sides of the heat exchanger may vary with flow Reynolds number, surface geometries, fluid thermophysical properties, and other factors. In this article we present simple analytical and numerical methods for calculating heat transfer area for data sets introduced earlier in the literature. For the analytical methods presented in the article, the variation in the overall heat transfer coefficient with the local hot and cold fluid temperature difference is expressed as a power-law model and as a general polynomial model. The procedure for calculating the heat transfer area with the power-law model is explained with respect to a simple closed-form solution, while the polynomial model can also provide an analytical solution that seems to be quite accurate for the data sets examined. It is also shown that a Chebyshev numerical integration scheme that requires four points compared to the Simpson method of three points is quite accurate (within 1% of the exact value).

Experimental investigations on the performance of an air heated humidification–dehumidification desalination system

Abstract Experiments on a single- and two-stage air-heated humidification–dehumidification desalination system (HDD) driven by solar energy are conducted. The system is built on the seashore of Dhahran, Eastern Province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In this harsh climate, natural water sources are absent. Currently, Saudi Arabia uses desalination to augment its water supply. It is ranked the first worldwide in water desalination. However, the current large-scale desalination plants are fossil-fuel-driven and consume large amount of energy. Since there is abundance of solar energy in the region, attempts are made to utilize the solar energy to produce fresh water on a small scale for remote areas. The HDD systems have received considerable attention as an effective way to produce fresh water in remote areas where receiving water through pipelines is a challenge. The system used in this study is a solar air heated, closed-water closed-air cycle that can be adjusted to operate in a single-stage or two-stag...

Thermodynamics, Exergy, and Energy Efficiency in Desalination Systems

Desalination is the thermodynamic process of separating fresh water from water that contains dissolved salts. This chapter introduces the concepts and methods required for thermodynamic analysis of desalination systems. Thermodynamic laws are summarized along with the chemical thermodynamics of electrolytes. Exergy analysis is introduced. The work and heat of separation are defined, and the roles of entropy generation and exergy destruction are identified. Important sources of entropy generation are discussed. Examples are given for the application of these methods to several representative desalination systems.