Description: This module introduces beginners to CFD analysis of chevron plate heat exchangers using ANSYS Fluent, a compact and highly efficient heat transfer device widely used across industries such as food processing and HVAC. The course builds foundational skill in simulating these plate-based exchangers, starting from the basics of the ANSYS Fluent interface and progressing through a complete simulation workflow suited to newcomers in thermal-fluid engineering.Methodology: The training walks through constructing a simplified chevron plate geometry, defining the working fluid properties, and setting appropriate inlet flow rates, temperatures, and outlet conditions, along with wall boundary conditions on the plate surfaces to capture realistic heat transfer behavior. Basic solver settings are configured, including an introductory turbulence model appropriate for beginner-level analysis, and the simulation is monitored through to convergence.Analysis: Results are explored through basic visualizations of velocity fields and temperature contours, along with an interpretation of fundamental pressure drop characteristics across the plate arrangement. These insights connect the observed flow and thermal behavior back to real-world chevron plate exchanger performance, giving learners a practical grounding in convective heat transfer analysis and a foundation for tackling more advanced heat exchanger CFD topics.

Description: This module introduces beginners to CFD analysis of reverse cross flow plate heat exchangers using ANSYS Fluent, a highly efficient, compact configuration common in HVAC systems and industrial process cooling. The course builds on core plate heat exchanger concepts by focusing on the cross flow arrangement's distinct plate layout and flow pattern, and extends into comparing how different flow directions affect thermal performance.Methodology: The training covers building a simplified cross flow geometry, defining the working fluid and plate material properties, and setting appropriate inlet and outlet conditions for both fluid streams, along with wall and interface boundary conditions to capture realistic heat transfer behavior. Solver parameters and convergence criteria suited to cross flow simulations are configured, and the solution is monitored for stability through to convergence.Analysis: Results are examined through velocity field and temperature contour visualizations, along with calculated local and overall heat transfer coefficients and exchanger effectiveness. The module also compares co-current and counter-current flow arrangements, evaluating how flow direction shapes temperature profiles and overall heat transfer effectiveness, giving learners a practical basis for informing design decisions in reverse cross flow heat exchanger applications.

Description: Shell and tube heat exchangers are a workhorse of the chemical process industry, and this project investigates how baffle cut geometry affects thermal performance within them. Baffles redirect shell-side flow to improve heat distribution, but adding more of them also raises pressure drop, so this simulation examines that tradeoff by treating the baffles and fluid together as a conjugated heat transfer problem, with the metal baffles modeled as solid domains actively participating in the heat exchange.Methodology: The geometry, built in Design Modeler, features a shell 600 mm long and 90 mm in diameter, containing six 4 mm-thick baffles spaced 86 mm apart with a 36% baffle cut, and seven tubes of 20 mm outer diameter arranged in a triangular pattern with 30 mm spacing. The domain is meshed in ANSYS Meshing as an unstructured grid of 1,953,754 elements with a 30 mm element size and a boundary layer mesh near the walls to satisfy Y-Plus requirements. Cool water enters the shell at 300 K and 0.7 m/s while the tube walls are held at a constant 450 K, with water properties defined as piecewise-linear functions of temperature for improved accuracy; the case is solved as steady-state using the pressure-based solver, realizable k-ε turbulence model with standard wall functions, SIMPLE pressure-velocity coupling, and first-order upwind discretization for the transport equations, with the shell wall treated as adiabatic and the outlet set to 0 Pa gauge pressure.Analysis: Results show the shell-side water heating from 300 K at the inlet to roughly 360 K at the outlet as it passes the hot tubes, with the heat transfer coefficient and total heat transfer rate converging steadily as the solution progresses. The conjugated modeling approach shows that the baffles noticeably accelerate temperature diffusion throughout the shell, raising the average fluid temperature and improving the heat transfer coefficient, while the mid-plane pressure contour reveals a pressure drop of around 1 kPa, giving a clear picture of the tradeoff between improved thermal performance and the added flow resistance the baffles introduce.

DescriptionSpiral heat exchangers are compact, coiled-channel devices used across chemical, petrochemical, and food processing industries for their space efficiency, self-cleaning behavior under fouling conditions, and strong performance with viscous or particulate-laden fluids. This CFD study uses ANSYS Fluent to model the fluid flow and heat transfer behavior within a spiral heat exchanger, capturing how the curved, counter-current channel geometry influences thermal performance compared to conventional straight-channel designs. The analysis provides a foundation for understanding how spiral configurations can be evaluated and optimized using computational tools before physical prototyping or deployment.MethodologyThe simulation begins with construction of the spiral channel geometry and definition of the fluid domains for both hot and cold streams. Material properties are assigned to the working fluids, and boundary conditions are specified at the inlets and outlets, including flow rates and stream temperatures for each channel. Wall and interface boundary conditions are configured to reflect the curved geometry of the spiral passages, which affects near-wall flow behavior and heat transfer differently than straight-channel arrangements. Solver settings, including solution methods and convergence criteria, are configured to handle the complexities of curved flow paths, and the simulation is monitored throughout the solving process to confirm stability and convergence.Results AnalysisPost-processing focuses on visualizing velocity fields and temperature distributions to reveal how fluid moves and heat transfers through the spiral channels. Local and overall heat transfer coefficients are extracted alongside pressure drop values, giving a quantitative basis for assessing exchanger performance. These results are compared against conventional heat exchanger benchmarks to evaluate gains in space efficiency and heat transfer enhancement, as well as the self-cleaning and fouling-resistance characteristics that distinguish spiral designs. The resulting insights support informed design decisions for improving spiral heat exchanger performance in real-world thermal management applications.

Description: A bubble trap is a deceptively simple device that solves an important problem in chemical and process engineering: removing unwanted gas bubbles from a liquid stream, relying purely on buoyancy to let bubble-laden fluid slow down inside a chamber so the lighter gas rises and separates while clean liquid exits below. This project uses ANSYS Fluent to simulate that separation process and observe the trap performing its function in real time.Methodology: The 2D geometry, built in SpaceClaim, features a mixture of water and bubbles entering through a side wall with a lower outlet for purified water to exit, meshed in ANSYS Meshing with roughly 32,000 cells. Because the separation depends on the density difference between the two phases, the Volume of Fluid model tracks the air-water interface, with gravity applied in the Y direction to drive the buoyant separation; the flow is treated as laminar and solved as unsteady so the full development of the separation process can be captured over time.Analysis: The results follow the complete sequence: the trap starts filled with water, the incoming mixture introduces bubbles, and the lighter gas phase rises to escape through the top outlet while clean water leaves through the bottom, exactly matching the intended function of the device. A transient animation captures this separation as it unfolds, giving a clear picture of how effectively buoyancy-driven phase separation performs in a gas-liquid trap.

Description: This project simulates a water spray issuing from a small circular inlet into a larger cubic enclosure, tracking the behavior of the spray particle by particle, and serves as a standard introduction to the Discrete Phase Model — the Lagrangian approach Fluent uses when the goal is to resolve the trajectory, velocity, and dispersion of individual droplets rather than treating the spray as a continuous second phase.Methodology: The geometry is a rectangular cube with a circular inlet on the top wall, built in Design Modeler and meshed in ANSYS Meshing with an unstructured grid of 25,464 cells. Because droplets move discretely through a continuous medium, the case couples a Lagrangian DPM with the continuous Eulerian air flow and is run as transient to capture how the spray develops over time. Water is released as a surface injection from the inlet, with droplets treated as inert particles, specifying how, where, and at what size and velocity the particles enter so Fluent can integrate each trajectory through the flow field.Analysis: Results include velocity and mass-concentration contours of the water particles at the final time step, along with 3-D particle tracks colored by speed and droplet diameter. The tracks confirm the injection behaves as expected, with droplets dispersing discretely from the top inlet and distributing through the enclosure — the kind of behavior relevant to sizing nozzles or predicting spray coverage in practical applications.

Description: Bubble dynamics sit at the heart of chemical engineering, since the rise, deformation, and coalescence of bubbles govern the gas-liquid interfacial area — and therefore mass transfer and reaction rates — in equipment such as bubble columns, aeration tanks, and gas-liquid contactors. This project simulates bubble motion rising through water over a plate, comparing cases with and without surface tension to assess how significantly this interfacial force affects bubble shape and behavior when the free surface between phases matters.Methodology: The 2D geometry, built in SpaceClaim, spans 50 mm long by 65 mm high and is meshed in ANSYS Meshing with a structured grid of 81,250 elements. The Volume of Fluid model tracks the two Eulerian phases — air and water — using a sharp interfacial interface with explicit formulation, alongside a laminar viscous model, an initial bubble size of 2 × 10⁻⁴ m, and gravity applied at −9.81 m/s² along the Y-axis; the case is solved as transient using a pressure-based solver, SIMPLE pressure-velocity coupling, PRESTO! for pressure, second-order upwind for momentum, and a compressive scheme for volume fraction, with the domain initialized as fully patched with water and run over 1,900 adaptive time steps of 0.0002 s each. Two otherwise identical cases are compared, differing only in whether surface tension is included.Analysis: The results show, through the resulting bubble shapes, how significantly the simulation is affected when surface tension is omitted: without it, the bubble fails to hold its form and collapses under the surrounding water pressure, rather than maintaining the coherent shape that surface tension would otherwise sustain. This underlines the importance of including interfacial forces when modeling bubble behavior, a key consideration for accurately predicting interfacial area and mass transfer in chemical-process equipment.

Description: Absorption is a method of separating the components of a gas mixture by bringing it into contact with a liquid solvent, relying on differences in solubility to draw one or more gas components into the liquid phase — a process refineries commonly use to strip ammonia out of a gas stream. This project simulates ammonia absorption from air inside an absorption tower using ANSYS Fluent, tracking how the gas and liquid streams interact as they pass through the column.Methodology: The 3D vertical tower geometry, built in Design Modeler, has an ammonia-laden airflow entering at 0.43 m/s through a bottom nozzle and exiting from the upper section, while liquid water enters at 0.0332 kg/s through a top nozzle and exits from the lower section — the two streams meeting and interacting as they move in opposite directions through the chamber. The domain is meshed in ANSYS Meshing with an unstructured grid of 478,882 elements, and the VOF multiphase model is used to resolve the interaction between the one-percent-ammonia air stream and the water solvent.Analysis: Post-processing includes 2D and 3D contours of pressure, velocity, turbulent viscosity, density, and the volume fractions of water, air, and ammonia, giving a full picture of how each phase behaves throughout the tower. The volume fraction contours show the ammonia concentration steadily declining in the gas phase as it rises through the chamber, while the corresponding water-phase contours show a matching increase in absorbed ammonia content as the liquid descends and contacts the rising gas — direct confirmation that mass transfer is occurring at the gas-liquid interface rather than the two streams simply passing by one another. The velocity and pressure fields further show how the counter-current arrangement of the two nozzles sets up the internal flow pattern that sustains this prolonged contact, which is central to the tower's separation performance. Taken together, the results confirm that the water phase effectively absorbs the ammonia and separates it from the gas stream, illustrating the core mechanism that makes packed absorption towers effective for gas purification in industrial process design.

DescriptionThis project simulates sludge flow settling in a pipe using ANSYS Fluent, investigated through CFD analysis. Sludge transport and sedimentation in process piping is a common concern in chemical engineering, where solid-laden fluids are routinely conveyed and where predicting whether the solids stay suspended or settle out governs pipe sizing, flow velocity, and the risk of line blockage. In this project, water enters the pipe at a velocity of 0.01 m/s, carrying sludge particles, with gravity included at −9.81 m/s² along the y-axis. The geometry was created in Design Modeler and consists of two sections: a lower section holding resident water, and an upper section containing the inlet and outlet. The model was meshed in ANSYS Meshing using an unstructured grid of 390,742 cells.MethodologySludge flow is treated as a multiphase flow, since the sludge particles are carried within the water, so a multiphase model is required. Fluent offers the VOF, mixture, and Eulerian models for this purpose; for sludge flows, the Eulerian model is the usual choice — it is the most complex of the three and treats each phase as a fully interpenetrating continuum with its own governing equations, making it well suited to capturing the settling behavior of the solid phase.ConclusionOn completion of the solution, two-dimensional contours of velocity and of the sludge and water volume fractions were obtained, along with an animation of the water and sludge volume fractions over time. The results show the two-phase flow entering the pipe in a mixed state. As time progresses, the sludge begins to settle out under gravity while the lighter water continues to move, and the U-shaped geometry of the tube promotes this sedimentation. Together, these results illustrate how the solid phase separates from the carrier fluid in a pipeline — the kind of solid-liquid settling behavior that is central to slurry handling and sedimentation processes in chemical engineering.

Description: Plasma gasification is a high-temperature waste-treatment process that converts organic material into synthetic gas, using an electric arc to generate plasma hot enough to ionize and break down feedstock into syngas and an inert solid residue — a technique used to treat waste and process biomass and heavy hydrocarbons like coal and petroleum sands into usable fuel gas. This project uses ANSYS Fluent to simulate the airflow and heat distribution inside such a reactor, capturing how the hot inlet streams behave as they meet and rise toward the outlet.Methodology: The reactor is modeled in 2D in Design Modeler as a symmetrical chamber with two side inlets and a single outlet along the top edge, meshed in ANSYS Meshing with a structured grid of 8,711 elements. Hot gas enters through both side inlets at 0.1 m/s and 2000 K, exiting through the top outlet at atmospheric pressure, while the side walls are held at a fixed 600 K to represent heat loss through the chamber boundary; the case is run to convergence to resolve how the two opposing inlet streams interact and how heat is transported through the domain.Analysis: Results include 2D contours of pressure, velocity, and temperature, along with path lines and velocity vectors. Pressure drops as the flow approaches the outlet, the maximum velocity occurs at the center of the chamber where the two inlet streams collide and merge, and the highest temperatures sit at the inlets, cooling as the gas mixes and moves toward the walls. These results illustrate how colliding opposed streams shape the internal velocity and temperature fields inside the reactor, giving a clear picture of the thermal-flow behavior central to plasma gasification performance.