Simulation of Evaporation and Condensation Phenomena in the Plate-Fin Converter of the LNG Process Using the CFD Method and Assessing Aspen Muse Software Performance

In this paper complex fluid flow and transport phenomena in plate-fin heat exchanger for LNG process are investigated. Modeling and simulation of heat transfer and fluid flow has been done using ANSYS Fluent software. This software has limitation in simulation of multispecies biphasic flow; therefore, UDF.A 2D model was used for modeling aforementioned phenomena in one channel of heat exchanger. HYSYS software was used for calculation of species equilibrium concentration and it was linked to ANSYS using UDF. Results shows that vapor volume fraction, species composition and heat transfer coefficient for CFD and Aspen muse are in good agreement, but pressure drop is over predicted by Aspen Muse. Using the developed model, a good deal of information was obtained about transport phenomena and fluid flow in cryogenic heat exchangers, while other software packages could not provide that much information.