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Chapter

Design of Industrial Falling Film

Evaporators
Muhammad Wakil Shahzad, Muhammad Burhan
and Kim Choon Ng

Abstract

The high performance evaporators are important for process industries such as
food, desalination and refineries. The falling film evaporators have many advan-
tages over flooded and vertical tubes that make them best candidate for processes
industries application. The heat transfer area is the key parameter in designing of an
evaporator and many correlations are available to estimate the size of tube bundle.
Unfortunately, most of the correlation is available only for pure water and above
322 K saturation temperatures. Out of these conditions, the areas are designed by
the extrapolation of existing correlations. We demonstrated that the actual heat
transfer values are 2–3-fold higher at lower temperature and hence simple extrapo-
lated estimation leads to inefficient and high capital cost design. We proposed an
accurate heat transfer correlation for falling film evaporators that can capture both,
low temperature evaporation and salt concentration effectively. It is also embedded
with unique bubble-assisted evaporation parameter that can be only observed at
low temperature and it enhances the heat transfer. The proposed correlation is
applicable from 280 to 305 K saturation temperatures and feed water concentration
ranges from 35,000 to 95,000 ppm. The uncertainty of measured data is less than
5% and RMS of regressed data is 3.5%. In this chapter, first part summarized the all
available correlations and their limitations. In second part, falling film evaporation
heat transfer coefficient (FFHTC) is proposed and model is developed. In the last
part, experimentation is conducted and FFHTC developed and compared with
conventional correlations.

Keywords: heat transfer, falling film, evaporator design, seawater evaporator

1. Introduction

The falling film evaporators currently leading in the processes industries because
they have many advantages over submerged tubes evaporators. In the past, the
vertical tubes evaporators were considered as most efficient but now they have
been replaced by falling film evaporators due to its distinctive nature of operation.
The submerged and vertical tubes evaporators are normally not fast responsive to
many operational parameters. On the other hand, the falling film evaporators
respond fast to feed quality and heat source supplied. These properties make them
very efficient to operate across small temperature differences so that they can be
arranged in cascading manners for maximum efficiency. In addition, falling film
evaporators have many other advantages such as:

1
Heat and Mass Transfer - Advances in Science and Technology Applications

1.1 Advantages of falling film evaporators

The falling film evaporators have following advantages over flooded

evaporators:

1. Compact design due to improved heat transfer.

2. Improved wettability provides uniform heat transfer properties across the

tubes.

3. Less charge requirement, two to three times the evaporation rate.

4.Fast operation and short contact time for working fluid, favourable for food
industry.

5. Falling film washed away the deposition on tubes that minimize the chances of
fouling on tube surfaces.

The falling film evaporators also have many advantages over vertical tubes
evaporators such as:

1. Smaller size as compared to vertical tubes for same capacity due to high heat
transfer coefficient.

2. Falling film evaporator tubes are available with different

corrugations to enhance the heat transfer rates as compared to vertical
tube evaporators.

3. Multi pass tube bundle design for required operation as compared to single
pass vertical tubes evaporators with limited operations.

4.Larger length to diameter ratio evaporator design is possible as compared to

vertical tubes that help to enhance wettability and minimize the chances of
dry-outs and flooding.

5. The compact design reduces the overall piping work as compared to single pass
large size vertical design.

6. Due to vertical stacking arrangement, the overall footprint can be small in large
industries by using falling film evaporators.

It can be seen clearly that falling film evaporators have many advantages over
submerged and vertical tubes evaporators but there is lack of heat transfer data at
sub-atmospheric temperature. Particularly, below 323 K, there is no data available
in the literature. This was one of the main motivations for this work.

2. Heat transfer review for falling film evaporators

An efficient design of falling film evaporators is important especially for food

and desalination industries. Conventionally, the empirical and theoretical correla-
tions available in the literature are employed for the heat transfer area estimation.
Most of correlations are based on different refrigerants and at near atmospheric
temperature. Only few correlations are available for pure water for 322 K and above
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Design of Industrial Falling Film Evaporators
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saturation temperatures. Table 1 provides the detail of many researchers’ work

related to heat transfer correlations. It also highlighted the studies of different
operational parameters impact on heat transfer.

Reference Investigators Detail

Basic correlation development

[1] Uche et al. Investigation of heat transfer coefficient for different

heat source temperature and different flow velocities for
vertical and horizontal tubes evaporators

[2] Ribatski and Jacobi Heat transfer coefficient values development for water
and other refrigerants for horizontal evaporators fitted
with single and multi tubes

[3] Adib et al. Experimentation on vertical tubes evaporators for heat

transfer coefficient investigation. They found good
agreement with published data [4–8]

[9] Parken and Fletcher Correlation development for non-boiling conditions

[10] Han and Fletcher Heat transfer coefficient correlation development for
falling film evaporators for boiling conditions above
322 K saturation temperatures.

[11–13] Fujita et. al Analytical model development for falling film

evaporators with R-11 refrigerant. The measured
accuracy was  20%

Operational parameters impact investigation

[11, 14–17] Liu et al., Fujita et al., Yang Film Reynold number investigation on heat transfer
et al., Parken et al., Ribatski coefficient and main conclusions are:
et al.
a. Heat transfer increase with Reynold number
b. Heat transfer decrease to its minimum value and
then increase
c. Heat transfer increase to maximum and then drop

[18] Lorenz and Yung Investigation of single tube and multi tubes arrangement
on heat transfer. They also found that the critical
Reynold number is below 300 and single tube have good
heat transfer as compared to array of tubes

[19] Thome et al. Heat transfer study on different tube geometry such as
Gewa-B, plain surface, turbo-BII HP and high heat flux
tubes. They found a stark difference in heat transfer
values

[11] Fujita et al. Tubes array and feed header impact on heat transfer was
studied and showed that top row has low heat transfer
due to direct exposure of feed

[14] Liu et al. Tubes geometry impact was investigated and concluded
that roll worked tubes heat transfer is 3–4 fold higher
them smooth tubes

[20] Aly et al. Film thickness impact was studied and found that
thickness has negative impact on heat transfer

[21–23] Moeykens et al. and Chang et al Impact of different refrigerants such as R-141b, R22,
R123 and R-134a were studied and found enhanced heat
transfer by additional distribution plats

[24] Bourouni et al. The characteristic dimensions effect was investigated

and found that heat transfer enhanced significantly with
increase in evaporator size

Table 1.
Literature summary on heat transfer coefficient investigation and operational parameters impact.

3
4

Heat and Mass Transfer - Advances in Science and Technology Applications

References Correlation

Xu et al. [25]

Heat source 50°C, deionized liquid, evaporator with copper tubes horizontally arranged

Fujita et al. [11] First tube:

 1=2
23
0:3
ðPrÞ0:25


Nu ¼ Ref þ 0:008 Ref
Second to last tubes:

23
0:3 1=2
Nu ¼ Ref þ 0:01 Ref ðPrÞ0:25
Refrigerant Freon R-11, copper tubes with electrical heaters, diameter 25 mm

Han and Fletcher [10]

  0:333
μ2l
hevaporation ¼ 0:0028: g:ρ2l :k3l
ðReΓ Þ0:5 ðPrÞ0:85

Pure water, 49–127°C, electrically heated single horizontal tube, OD—50.8 mm, thickness—1.7 mm,
length—254 mm

Bourouni et al. [24]

 2 0:333
ν
H 0:1 0:333
hf ¼ 2:2: g:kf 3



: OD : Ref
l

Pure water, 60 and 90°C, polypropylene horizontal tubes aero-evaporator, OD—25.4 mm

Chun and Seban [26]

5

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84230
Design of Industrial Falling Film Evaporators
References Correlation
  0:333
μ2l 0:22
hfilm ¼ 0:821: g:ρ2 :k3 ðReΓ Þ
l l

Pure water, 46–118°C, vertical single tube evaporator with electrical heater, tube 28 mm diameter
and 292 mm long

0:158
Alhusseini et al. [27] Laminar regime: hlaminar ¼ 2:65:ðReÞ ðKaÞ0:0563

1=5
Mixed regime: h ¼ h5laminar þ h5turbulent
Pure water and Propylene glycol

Shmerler et al. [28] hE ¼ 0:0038:ðReΓ Þ0:35 ðPrÞ0:95

Vertical tube evaporator with electrical heat, water as a working fluid, tubes 25.4 mm diameter and
781 mm long

Chien et al.[29] Nucv ¼ 0:0386:ðReΓ Þ0:09 :ðReΓ Þ0:986

Horizontal tubes evaporator with R245fa refrigerants, operational temperature 5 and 20°C

Table 2.
Review of heat transfer coefficient correlations for different evaporator design and operation conditions.
Heat and Mass Transfer - Advances in Science and Technology Applications

The heat transfer correlations available in the literature are based on different
parameters and they have some limitations. Table 2 showed most famous and
widely accepted heat transfer coefficient correlations and their limitations.
The most commonly used correlation is proposed by Han and Fletcher for
horizontal tube falling film evaporators. They developed this correlation for pure
water at saturation temperature ranges from 322 to 393 K. It can be noticed that
there are two major gaps in available literature; firstly, no data is available for
evaporation heat transfer for below 322 K and secondly, there is lack of data for salt
solution as boiling point elevation changes with salt concentration. These two fac-
tors are important for processes industries falling film evaporators design as most of
processes are performed below 322 K such as in food and desalination industries
[30–42]. This was the main motivation of this study, to provide detailed parameters
for falling film evaporators design for process industries. We developed falling film
heat transfer coefficient (FFHTC) correlation for saline water evaporation from 280
to 305 K saturation temperatures. We also demonstrated the effect of salt concen-
tration on heat transfer and LMTD. This will help to design efficient falling film
evaporators for processes industries.

3. Falling film heat transfer coefficient development

The idea was to modify the famous and well accepted Han and Fletcher’s corre-
lation to incorporate the different salt concentration effect and expanded to low
range temperature evaporation. This will help to fill two major gaps as mentioned
earlier in processes industries evaporators design.

3.1 Theoretical model

The dimensionless terms such as Nusselt, Reynolds and Prandtl numbers in the
Han and Fletcher’s correlation are adequate to incorporate the liquid film thermal
effect in heat transfer. As per steam properties table, the specific volume of steam is
rapidly changes at low temperature and it might have significant effect on heat
transfer. At low temperature, the generation of microbubbles at tubes surfaces
rapidly detach due to low density and it agitate the thermal barrier formed by liquid
film. The conventional heat transfer correlations are not able to capture this effect.
The heat transfer enhancement due to micro-bubble generation and detaching is an
important phenomenon at low temperature and need to be captured in heat transfer
correlation for efficient evaporator design.
The basic form of Han and Fletcher’s correlation is shown in Eq. (1).
 2 1=3
μl
hevap gρ2l
¼ Nu ¼ 0:0028ðReΓ Þ0:5 ðPrÞ0:85 (1)
kl

The constants and indices can be found from the boundary conditions of falling
film evaporators. The heat supplied to the evaporator can be calculated by the
energy balance of hot water circulation through the tubes as presented in Eq. (2).

Q in ¼ mch, w Cpch, w T och, w T ich, w

(2)

The overall heat transfer coefficient (Uoverall) can be calculated by using the
saturation temperatures of evaporator and log mean temperature difference
(LMTD) parameters as shown in Eq. (3).

6
Design of Industrial Falling Film Evaporators
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84230

mch, w Cpch, w T out T in

ch, w ch, w
UAoverall ¼ 8 9 (3)
>
> >
>
>
> >
>
>
> >
>
ð ch, w sat Þ ðT ch,w T sat Þ
< T out T in =

T out T sat
> >
ch, w
>
> >
>
>
>
> ln   >
>
>
T in
: T
;
ch, w sat

The Dittus-Boelter correlation can be applied to investigate the local heat trans-
fer coefficient for falling film evaporators as shown in Eq. (4).

Nu ¼ 0:023Re0:25 Prn (4)

Now, falling film heat transfer coefficient for evaporation can be calculated by
applying Eqs. (1)–(4). The material resistance is neglected due to very thin tube
wall (less than 0.7 mm). Eq. (5) presents the calculation process for falling film heat
transfer coefficient.
   
1 1 1
¼ þ Rwall þ (5)
UA hA tubeside hA outside

The unknown parameters in Eq. (5) are calculated by the planned experiments
as discussed in the following sections.

3.2 Experimental apparatus

The pilot facility of adsorption desalination (AD) cycle in Mechanical Engineer-

ing (ME) Department of NUS is utilized to investigate the unknown parameters for
FFHTC correlation development. The AD pilot facility is shown in Figure 1.
The AD cycle has four major components such as (a) reactor beds packed with
adsorbent, (b) evaporator, (c) condenser and (d) circulation pumps. In addition,
there is also a conditioning facility and pre-treatment facility to perform test at an
accurate conditions. The flow schematic of AD cycle is shown in Figure 2.
To investigate the falling film heat transfer coefficient, evaporator is designed
with horizontal tubes arranged in staggered manner. There are four rows of tubes
and each row has 12 tubes installed in four pass arrangements. The tubes are

Figure 1.
Adsorption cycle pilot installed at NUS, Singapore (published with PI permission [43, 44]).

7
Heat and Mass Transfer - Advances in Science and Technology Applications

Figure 2.
Adsorption cycle flow schematic with detailed components (published with author’s permission [43, 44]).

Parameters Values Units

Number of tubes 52

Length of each tube 2000 mm

Tube outer diameter 25 mm

Tube thickness 1.0 mm

No of passes 2

Shell diameter 600 mm

Shell length 1800 mm

Table 3.
Adsorption cycle evaporator design parameters.

fabricated with special outside and inside profile to enhance heat transfer. The
design parameters of evaporator are given in Table 3.

3.2.1 Experimental procedure

There are three liquid circuits in the system those are important to control and
maintain for a successful experiment. Firstly, the chilled water circulation through
the tubes of evaporator to maintain required saturation temperature. An accurate
thyristor controlled heater is installed to control chilled water temperature within
 0.15 K. A vacuum rated feed pump help to spray water from pool of evaporator
below tubes bundle to the tubes surface. To maintain the liquid level in the evapo-
rator, the evaporated quantity refluxed back from condenser as a close loop.
Secondly, the cold water supply to the adsorption bed to remove the heat of
adsorption. The adsorber bed directly communicates to evaporator to adsorb the
vapors and release the heat of adsorption. This heat must be removed to maintain
the vapor uptake otherwise it can be drooped to very low quantity. The cooled
water flow through the cooling tower on the rooftop to reject heat to the ambient.
Lastly, the heat source to the desorber bed to regenerate the adsorbent. Once the
adsorber bed fully saturated, it cannot take more vapor and it has to be regenerated
for next adsorption process. The hot water is circulated through the tubes of the bed
to supply heat of desorption to the adsorbent. The hot water temperature is
maintained either by heater or solar thermal collectors.

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Design of Industrial Falling Film Evaporators
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Since whole system is operating at sub-atmospheric pressure so it is required to

remove the non-condensable gases. A vacuum pump is connected to all the major
components to remove non-condensable in case on any leakage. Table 4 shows the
operation parameters of AD cycle.
The system is instrumented with highly accurate sensors to extract real time
data. For example, for pressure measurements, Yokogawa pressure transducers are
installed. These sensors can measure 0–60 kPa (abs) with accuracy of 0.25%.
Similarly, liquid flow is measured by KROHNE flow meters (accuracy  0.5%) and
temperatures are recorded by OMEGA 10 kΩ thermistors (accuracy  0.15 K). All
sensors are connected to Agilent system for data logging.

Parameters Values Units

Chilled water flow rate 50 LPM

Sea water flow rate (Г) 1.8 LPM/m of tube length

Feed water salinity range 35,000–95,000 ppm

Table 4.
Experimental operational parameters of adsorption pilot.

Figure 3.
Micro-bubbles agitation of liquid film on evaporator tube surfaces captured by camera (published with
author’s permission [43, 44]).

Figure 4.
Conventional thermal barrier braking phenomenon due to bubble agitation (published with author’s
permission [43, 44]).

9
Heat and Mass Transfer - Advances in Science and Technology Applications

To capture the event of micro-bubble formation at low pressure, a high speed

camera was installed on evaporator. The camera successfully captured the agitation
of liquid film on tube surface due to formation and detaching of micro-bubbles as
shown in Figure 3. The phenomenon of breaking the liquid thermal barrier due to
film agitation is presented in Figure 4 step by step. The natural temperature gradi-
ent within liquid film on tubes surface is the major bottle neck in heat transfer. The
micro-bubble generation at low temperature agitates this barrier due to low density
and produce turbulence as also captured by camera. The micro-bubble, firstly
agitate the liquid film and break thermal barrier that enhance heat transfer. Sec-
ondly, when it moves up due to low density, it draw heat and provide space to
adjacent liquid to have direct contact with tube surface that helps faster heat
transfer rates.

4. Results and discussion

The overall heat transfer coefficient (U) was calculated at assorted heat source
and salt concentrations. The evaporator chilled water temperature was varies from
10 to 40°C and salt concentration from 35,000 to 95,000 ppm. The typical trend is
presented in Figure 5 at 90,000 ppm salt concentration. The similar trend was
observed at other concentration values.
The two important results can be concluded, firstly, the U values drop over 25%
due to salt concentration at lower temperature but this impact is not very significant
at higher temperature. This might be due to propertied change at higher tempera-
ture. Secondly, The U values are higher at lower temperature and this is due to
micro-bubble generation and detaching phenomenon as described earlier. The same
trend of U values at all concentrations strengthens the argument of micro-bubble
enhanced heat transfer phenomenon.

Figure 5.
Overall heat transfer coefficient profiles at 90,000 ppm salt concentration and different chilled water
temperatures (with author’s permission [43, 44]).

10
Design of Industrial Falling Film Evaporators
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84230

The falling film heat transfer coefficient (FFHTC) values are then calculated by
using the methodology presented in the earlier section and presented in Figure 6. It
can be noticed that FFHTC follows the same trend as U values at assorted heat
source and salt concentrations.
The noticeable point in the plot is the heat transfer coefficient values drop
initially with drop in evaporator vapor space temperature and achieve minimum
values at 300 K. Once the vapor space temperature dropped further down, the heat
transfer values start increasing. The increasing trend is even sharper below 295 K
vapor space temperature and this is because of rapid change in vapor specific
volume. The vapor specific volume change can divide the evaporation processes
into three categories; namely, film surface evaporation, transition and micro-bubble
assisted evaporation. The sharp change in specific volume below 295 K help to
generate micro-bubble that detach from tube surface immediately due to low den-
sity and agitate the thermal barrier resulting increase in heat transfer rates. This
phenomenon is observed and captured for the first time and named as “micro-
bubble assisted film evaporation”.
It can be clearly noticed that micro-bubbles play an important role at low
temperature to enhance the heat transfer. The traditional heat transfer coefficient
correlations are not able to capture this unique phenomenon. All correlations avail-
able in the literature can only work in film surface evaporation zone. Their extrap-
olation to capture transition and micro-bubble assisted zone also cannot predict an
accurate value and heat exchanger designed based on these values cannot perform
up to the level. Hence there is an urgent need for the development of an accurate
heat transfer coefficient correlation to capture these two zones for efficient heat
exchanger design.
A new correlation is proposed for falling film heat transfer coefficient that can
efficiently capture transition and micro-bubble assisted evaporation at assorted salt
concentration. The proposed model was written in FORTRAN and fitted with
experimental data conditions. All important parameters such as heat flux, flow
velocity and vapor properties were also included. Most importantly, the salt con-
centration and vapor specific volume parameters those were missing in conven-
tional correlations are also embedded in the proposed correlation as shown in
Eq. (6) [48, 49].

Figure 6.
Experimental film evaporation heat transfer coefficient profiles at different saturation temperature and
different salt concentrations (with author’s permission [43, 44]).

11
Heat and Mass Transfer - Advances in Science and Technology Applications

(  0:333 0:45
μl 2 S
    
2:18 4:0
hfallingfilm ¼ 0:279 ð Re Þ ðP r Þ 2: exp 1
g:ρl 2 K l 3 30000
T evap  q  V 
  
evap
: g þ 0:875 : (6)
322 DT 52:65

The proposed correlation is applicable from 280 to 305 K saturation tempera-

tures. It also captures the feed water concentration ranges from 35,000 to
95,000 ppm. The film Reynolds number (ReГ) ranges from 45 to 90 and Prandtl
number (Pr) from 5 to 10. In proposed correlation, the first term control the
thermally driven evaporation and second terms capture bubble assisted evaporation
phenomenon that is missing in the conventional correlations. The proposed model
results are presented in Figure 7. It can be noticed that model has good agreement
with experimental results. The uncertainty of measured data is less than 5% and
RMS of regressed data is 3.5%.
Conventionally, the Han and Fletcher correlation is applied in the industry for
low temperature rages with its extrapolated results. The comparison of actual heat
transfer values calculated by the experiments is compared with extrapolated Han
and Fletcher values and it can be observed from Figure 8 that there is huge differ-
ence. The conventional Han and Fletcher correlation can only capture film evapo-
ration zone accurately but bubble assisted evaporation is totally out of range. The
unique feature of “bubble assisted evaporation” can only be captured by the pro-
posed falling film heat transfer coefficient correlation that boost heat transfer 2–3
fold. As a result, for process industries where the saturation temperature is below
295 K, the evaporator can be compact and low cost as compared to current design.

Figure 7.
The proposed falling film heat transfer coefficient correlation with experimental results (with author’s
permission [43, 44]).

12
Design of Industrial Falling Film Evaporators
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84230

Figure 8.
Proposed falling film heat transfer coefficient compared with conventional Han & Fletcher’s extrapolated
values (with author’s permission [43, 44]).

The proposed correlation is timely and important for efficient design of falling film
evaporator for process industries.

5. Summary

The horizontal falling film evaporators have many advantages over submerged
and vertical tubes evaporators. Currently, there is no heat transfer correlation that
can capture evaporation at low temperature especially below 295 K with different
salt concentration. This is very important for efficient design of process evapora-
tors. A horizontal tube falling film heat transfer coefficient correlation is proposed
to capture effect, low temperature and salt concentration. It is demonstrated that
the actual heat transfer values at low temperature can be 2–3 fold higher than the
estimated values due to unique bubble-assisted evaporation phenomenon. The pro-
posed correlation is applicable from 280 to 305 K saturation temperatures and feed
water concentration ranges from 35,000 to 95,000 ppm. The uncertainty of mea-
sured data is less than 5% and RMS of regressed data is 3.5%.

Acknowledgements

Authors would like to thanks to KAUT and NUS for this study. The data is
reproduced by the author’s permission [44].

Nomenclature

μl liquid viscosity (kg/m-s)

kl liquid conductivity (W/m K)
Pr Prandtl number
q input heat flux (W/m2)

13
Heat and Mass Transfer - Advances in Science and Technology Applications

T evap evaporator saturation temperature (K)

T saturation evaporator saturation temperature (K)
T ch, in chilled water inlet temperature (K)
vg vapor specific volume (m3/kg)
ΔT Tch,out Tevap
ρl liquid density (kg/m3)
ReΓ Film Reynolds number
S feed water salinity (ppm)

Abbreviations

EHTC evaporation heat transfer coefficient

FFEHTC falling film evaporation heat transfer coefficient
MED multi-effect desalination
MSF multi stage flash evaporation
AD adsorption desalination
LMTD log mean temperature difference
ppm part per million

Author details

Muhammad Wakil Shahzad*, Muhammad Burhan and Kim Choon Ng

Water Desalination and Reuse Center (WDRC), King Abdullah University of
Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.

14
Design of Industrial Falling Film Evaporators
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84230

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