1 reply to this topic

[Teknas]

Greetings,

I am working on a heat recovery project. In this project, we are diverting the overhead vapors from an existing column to a newly designed steam generator.

The overhead vapors should be ideally, totally condensed, but in our case for some reason we are not doing so. The net result is that we have a 2-phase flow at the outlet of the steam generator. These vapors are then sent to the existing air cooler, where these will be condensed and sub-cooled to @ 70 deg C.

My query is that, when the two-phase fluid will flow to the existing air cooler (which has 6 bays), how will the liquid distribute. Will there be any vibration problems?

Although I have rated the air cooler in HTRI and it does not show any errors or warnings, but I would like to go through some material which explains design of air coolers for a two phase inlet.

Thank you, looking forward to your valuable inputs.

[Dacs]

Normally when you provide symmetrical piping for all the bays of your air coolers, it's enough to provide equal flows to all bays. But while this is accepted practice for single phase streams, my opinion is I don't see any reason why this won't be applicable for two-phase streams as well.

Vibration on the other hand largely depends on the regime your two-phase flow is occurring. Vibration is most likely for slug flow so you have to design your piping to either avoid it or provide extra support for vibration.