•  
  •  
 

Article Type

Original Study

Abstract

The energy sector in Iraq has lots of potential but the infrastructures are old and lack optimum thermal efficiency resulting in high consumption of fuel and environmental degradation. The study focuses on the urgent necessity of modernization of the thermal energy conversion systems in the industrial plants of Iraq by means of the further development of numerical simulation. The paper applies the Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD) through ANSYS Fluent to model and optimize a shell-and-tube heat exchanger, which is similar to the ones employed in heat recovery units in Iraqi thermal power plants like the Al-Dora power plant in Baghdad. The methods to be used include the creation of a high-fidelity 3D model, mesh-independent study by a rigorous mesh study and realistic boundary conditions based on operational data involving the Iraqi climate and industry. They are three optimization cases: 10% growth of flow velocity, a change in internal baffle geometry and a change in the wall material (Carbon Steel to Low-Alloy Steel). The quantitative findings reveal the great performance improvements. The greatest enhancement was observed by the geometry change that provided a significant improvement of the heat transfer coefficient by around 18 percent and a decrease in the area needed to transfer heat. The resulting material modification resulted in a drop of 9 percent in pressure drop that reduced the power needs of parasitic pumping. All these optimizations will lead to an estimated fuel consumption of 2.7% reduction in an average unit at the Al-Dora facility. This research confirms the hypothesis statement that CFD-based optimization is an effective, inexpensive method of thermal efficiency optimization and offers a practical, tested system to be used in the Iraq power generation and refinery industries to help achieve national objectives of energy security and environmental sustainability.

Keywords

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), ANSYS fluent, Thermal energy conversion, Heat exchanger optimization, Thermal management, Iraqi power plants, Energy efficiency

Download

Share

COinS