Distribution characteristics of liquid in spiral-wound heat exchanger under sloshing conditions

The maldistribution of working medium restricts the heat transfer performance of the spiral-wound heat exchangers (SWHEs), especially when the heat exchangers are applied in floating production storage and offloading platform. Therefore, the maldistribution in the SWHEs needs to be studied under sloshing conditions. In the investigation, a novel distributor named “disc distributor” is designed and its distribution characteristic is analysed under sloshing conditions experimentally. The impacts of sloshing amplitude, sloshing periods, mass flow rate and structural parameters on flow uniformity are discussed. The results show that based on steady condition the augmentation of the sloshing amplitude makes the liquid uniformity deteriorate by 14.2–56.0%, and the enlargement of the sloshing period improves the liquid flow uniformity by 12.8–28.3%. The elevation of the mass flow rate promotes the flow uniformity by 23.8–27.0% and 13.9–32.4% under steady and sloshing conditions, respectively. The variation of hole diameter exacerbates distribution performance of the distributor by 5.3–18.4% and 2.5–22.3% under steady and sloshing conditions separately. Heave condition always has less influence on the flow uniformity of the distributor than other sloshing conditions.