CFD Study of Ice Slurry Heat Transfer Characteristics in a Straight Horizontal Tube

Ice slurry heat transfer characteristics in a straight horizontal tube were numerically studied in this paper. By using of CFD software, the VOF model in FLUENT 6.3, the simulation of ice slurry was performed to cover laminar and turbulent flow regimes with Cis varying from 0% to 20%. The obtained results were firstly validated by the published experimental values. It is found that the discrepancy between the measured and calculated Nuis number is mainly in the range of ±15%. Then the model was applied to analyze the impact of initial conditions on ice slurry heat transfer. The present work shows that, ice slurry heat transfer performance are strongly dependent on the flow velocity and ice mass fraction, and heat flux density only has a small influence on the value of Nuis when ice slurry flows in turbulence. This paper aimed to use this model as a design tool to analyze ice slurry flow in different operating conditions.