Numerical Simulations of Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer through Aluminum and Copper Metal Foam Heat Exchanger – A Comparative Study

Abstract

This article discusses about a numerical simulation of a metal foam heat exchanger system carried out by a commercial software. A metal foam layer is attached to the bottom of the heat exchanger to absorb heat from the exhaust hot gas leaving the system. Two types of metal foams with two different pores per inch (PPI) values are considered for heat transfer enhancement. Similarly, two different materials Aluminum and copper, that poses high thermal conductivity, metal foams are considered for the present numerical simulations. The heat exchanger system is simulated over a range of 6–30?m/s fluid velocity. The proposed simulations are compared with theoretical and experimental data available in the literature. The goal is to improve the thermal performance of the heat exchanger by decreasing the pressure drop and maximizing the heat transfer rate. Finally, it has been noticed that the velocity of the fluid decreases as PPI increases at the expense of its pressure drop. The copper metal foam gives a maximum increase of 4–10% heat transfer rate compared to aluminum metal foams for a fluid velocity of 30?m/s.     

Security services as coping mechanisms: an investigation into user intention to adopt an email authentication service

Email plays an important role in the digital economy but is threatened by increasingly sophisticated cybercrimes. A number of security services have been developed, including an email authentication service designed to cope with email threats. It remains unknown how users perceive and evaluate these security services and consequently form their adoption intention. Drawing on the Technology Acceptance Model and Technology Threat Avoidance Theory, this paper investigates the factors that affect user intention to adopt an email authentication service. Our results show that user intention to adopt an email security service is contingent upon users' perception of risk and evaluation of both internal and external coping strategies. This study contributes to research in security service adoption, service success and design, and information security behaviour.     

Optimization of crude distillation system using aspen plus: Effect of binary feed selection on grass-root design

With an objective to supplement guidelines available as general rules of thumb for the grass-root design of crude distillation unit (CDU) using binary crude mixtures, this work presents the optimization of crude distillation unit using commercial Aspen Plus software. The crude distillation unit constituted a pre-flash tower (PF), an atmospheric distillation unit (ADU) and a vacuum distillation unit (VDU). Optimization model constituted a rigorous simulation model supplemented with suitable objective functions with and without product flow rate constraints. Three different feed stocks namely Bombay crude, Araby crude and Nigeria crude were considered in this work along with various binary combinations of these crudes. The objective function considered was profit function (subjected to maximization) for cases without product flow rate constraints and raw-materials and energy cost (subjected to minimization) for cases with product flow rate constraints. Parametric study pertaining to feed selection and composition has been conducted in this work to further benefit refinery planning and scheduling. Simulation study inferred that the product flow rate constraints sensitively affect atmospheric distillation column diameter and crude feed flow rate calculations. Based on all simulation studies, a generalized inference confirms that it is difficult to judge upon the quality of the solutions obtained as far as their global optimality is concerned.