Modeling and Thermodynamic Analysis of Vacuum Crystallizer with Heat Pump

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Faculty of Mech Eng. SUT

2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shahrood University of Technology, Shahrood, Iran.

3 Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Shahrood University of Technology,Shahrood, Iran

Abstract

In this article, a forced circulation crystallizer under vacuum, which consists of crystallizer, pump and heat exchanger, is proposed for the purpose of providing fresh water for consumption. In order to simultaneously supply the heating load of the crystallizer and also to distill the water vapor coming out of the crystallizer, a heat pump has been used as a new method. A laboratory set is designed and built to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system, which includes a forced circulation crystallizer cycle. The average error percentage between the laboratory and simulation results was reported as 4.8%. The results indicate that by changing the inlet temperature and pressure of the crystallizer, the rate of salt crystal production and fresh water production increases by 0.65 and 19.81 kg/h, respectively. Electric energy consumption also decreases with the increase of feed water inlet temperature and the heat capacity of the heat exchanger, and the lowest amount of electric energy consumption occurs at the temperature of 50 degrees Celsius, the pressure of the crystallizer is 0.085 bar, and the heat capacity of the heat exchanger is 13.25 kw.

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