Indirect contact freeze water desalination for an ice maker machine – CFD simulation

• Main Authors: Jayakody Harith, Al-Dadah Raya, Mahmoud Saad
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: EDP Sciences 2017-01-01
• Series: E3S Web of Conferences
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/20172200072

To offer for potable water shortages, sea water desalination is a potential solution for the global rising demand for fresh water. The latent heat of fusion is about one-seventh the latent heat of vaporisation, thus indicating the benefit of lower energy consumption for the freeze desalination process. Limited literature is reported on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) on freeze desalination. Therefore, analysing and investigating thermodynamic processes are easily conducted by the powerful tool of CFD. A single unit of ice formation in an ice maker machine was modelled using ANSYS Fluent software three-dimensionally. Energy, species transport and solidification/melting modules were used in building the CFD model. Parametric analysis was conducted using the established CFD model to predict the effects of freezing temperature and the geometry of the ice maker machine; on ice production and the freezing time. Lower freezing temperatures allowed more ice production and faster freezing. Increasing the diameter and the length of the freezing tube enabled more ice to be produced.