Lattice Boltzmann simulation of a storage tank with an immersed tube bundle heat exchanger

Abstract

Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.A rectangular storage tank with an immersed cylindrical tube bundle heat exchanger has been simulated by Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM). The details of transient temperature distributions and flow streamlines in the nearby field of each tube are clearly demonstrated as well as the complexity of the overall flow field and the extent of the mixing during discharge. The LBM makes the directly simulation possible and the computational speed is increased comparing to a conventional porous medium model simulation. The transient averaged Nusselt numbers of the tube bundle have been obtained, which can also be applied in other applications such as numerical simulations of porous medium models.