Numerical Simulation of Plate Evaporators in Multi-effect Distillation Seawater Desalination

Owning to the high heat transfer coefficient and relatively small heat transfer areas, plate evaporator is now becoming more dominant in the desalination market. However, literatures on plate evaporator performance for seawater desalination are rather limited. Physical and mathematics model for plate evaporator with corrugated plate was developed for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. Two-phase flow and heat transfer characteristics in the channel of plate evaporator were analyzed in detail. The effects of different geometric parameters of corrugated plate inclination angle on seawater evaporating performance were revealed and discussed. In order to verify the simulation results, the experimental correlation for flow performance characteristics of plate evaporator was employed to compare with that of CFD results. The results may benefit the design of plate evaporators for multi effect distillation seawater desalination. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.