Paper Title
Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Two-phase Flow Orientation Direction Change on a Vertical Flash Tank Separator

Abstract
In refrigeration and air conditioning systems, a vertical flash tank separator is one of the most important component that can be used to improve the system performance. Using vertical flash tank technique improves the effective area and enhances the heat transfer coefficient in the evaporator. However, enhancing and improving the performance of the vertical flash tank separator need further investigation. In order to provide an optimum configuration and performance, this paper provides experimental and numerical investigation of two-phase flow direction change effect on the performance of the vertical flash tank separator. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was used to assess the effect of flow direction change. Series of experiments were performed to test the CFD proposed configurations. The results revealed that the inlet flow direction has a significant effect on the performance of the vertical flash tank. The CFD simulations gave a good agreement with the experiments, all the simulations underestimated the liquid separation efficiency by approximately 0.02 over the range of conditions tested. ANSYS 17.1 was used to carry out the simulation. The geometry of the vertical flash tank separator was generated by the ANSYS modular design based on the dimensions of experimental test section, then lunched to the ANSYS meshing to generate a suitable mesh. Keyword - Vertical flash tank separator, Two-phase flow, Liquid separation efficiency, ANSYS 17.1