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An Evaluation and Redesign of a Thermal Compression Evaporator

Evaporators separate liquids from solutions. For maximum efficiency, designers reduce the temperature difference between the heating and heated media using multiple-stage evaporators. This efficiency requires increased size and bulk. A vendor claimed its thermal compression evaporator achieved high efficiency with only two stages. It did not function as claimed. This project investigated the evaporator's design to identify its problems and propose an alternative design with a minimized footprint. The analysis showed theoretical flaws and design weaknesses in the evaporator, including violation of the first law of thermodynamics. An alternative thermal compressor design was created through computational fluid dynamics using spreadsheet methods developed in house, aided by the software product FLUENT. Detailed component sizing was done using the software product HYSYS. The proposed redesign achieved four to one efficiency with two stage thermal compression, using one half of the space of a traditional system of similar performance.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uno.edu/oai:scholarworks.uno.edu:td-1907
Date15 May 2009
CreatorsDay, Benjamin Marc
PublisherScholarWorks@UNO
Source SetsUniversity of New Orleans
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceUniversity of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

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