(230h) Effect of Multiport Vapor Injection on the Performance of a GOX-LOX Direct Contact Condenser

Effect of Multiport Vapor Injection on the Performance
of a GOX-LOX Direct Contact Condenser

K
N Jayachandran¹, Arnab Roy² and Parthasarathi
Ghosh³

1
– Ph.D. Research Scholar, Cryogenic Engineering Centre, Indian Institute of Technology,
Kharagpur, West Bengal-721302, India

2
– Associate Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of
Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal-721302, India

3
- Associate Professor, Cryogenic Engineering Centre, Indian Institute of Technology,
Kharagpur, West Bengal-721302, India

To
power the booster turbine of a typical staged combustion cycle based cryogenic rocket
engines, gaseous oxygen (GOX) at high temperature and pressure from either (a)
the preburner (along with the combustion products) or
(b) from the cooled nozzle section, is utilized. After running the booster
turbine, the hot oxygen gas gets mixed with subcooled liquid oxygen (LOX) from
the booster pump outlet and gets condensed completely within the inlet duct to
the main LOX pump. This leads to a direct contact condensation (DCC) problem
and the inlet duct to the main LOX pump is termed as the direct contact
condenser. Very few investigations [1, 2] have been reported in the DCC
phenomena of oxygen gas-liquid mixtures, though plenty of works are reported in
the DCC of other fluids especially steam-water mixtures owing to its wide range
of applications. In addition, most of the studies were on single port injection,
where the vapor jets are injected through a single
port, though the actual configuration consists of multiple ports of vapor injection. The goal of the present investigation is
to examine the effects of multiport vapor injection
on the performance of the GOX-LOX direct contact condenser within a numerical
framework. A two fluid Eulerian multiphase formulation has been used and the
condensation effects are captured using the thermal phase change model. The
transient simulations are performed with an element based finite volume
discretization method in the coupled solver available in the commercial CFD
package ANSYS CFX^®. The effects of port size, location, and angle of
injection on the condensation process are studied, which will provide valuable
recommendations from a design point of view.

References

1.
Li, Y., Li, C., Chen, E., and Ying, Y., Pressure wave propagation
characteristics in a two-phase flow pipeline for liquid-propellant rocket. Aerospace
Science and Technology, 2011. 15: p. 453–464.

2.
Jayachandran, K. N., Roy, A., and Ghosh, P., Numerical
Studies on Direct Contact Condensation (DCC) of Subsonic Vapor/Gas Jets in
Subcooled Flowing Liquid. 55th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting, AIAA SciTech
Forum, 9 - 13 January 2017, Grapevine, Texas.