Thermal Fluid Dynamics Analysis of Crude Oil Fouling in a Heat Exchanger with Internal Mechanical Inserts.

The paper studies crude oil fouling in a heat exchanger. A new procedure based on the computational fluid dynamics technique (CFD) is used. In particular, tubes with inserts are compared with plain tubes in order to investigate fouling generation in these specific devices. The inserts considered are static mixers called twisted tape, used as a heat transfer enhancement passive technique. The kind of fouling studied is that promoted by the chemical reactions of asphaltene and salt, essential components of crude oil. To describe the chemical reaction fouling phenomena, and appreciate the dependence on time, a species transport model and a multicomponent approach for a binary diffusion coefficient are used in order to simulate the mixing and transport of chemical species. The main aim of this work is to simulate the crude oil flow inside tubes in which chemical reactions occur and determine important parameters such as rate and resistance to fouling, and so to appreciate the reduction of fouling when twisted tape inserts are used.