What is the best item to represent heat exchanger?
FlexSim 18.1.2
Can you describe what type of process you are trying to simulate? There is the fluid simulator that you can take a look at that could show the transfer of heat from one container to another, but more info would be needed to help you.
Process: I need to cool down hot water from a tank pumped to a heat exchanger on one side. While on the other side, the cold seawater act as a medium to cool down the hot water. But the two types of water never mix. How should I design that? and at the end the cool water (not the seawater) is passed to another collecting tank.. Appreciate if you could help me for the heat exchange part. Thank you.
If I try to translate it into FlexSim, you have a coupled processor system where the efficiency of the first process controls the output of the second. If I translate it deeper into a discrete model a supporting unit sets the efficiency of a processor. You find such a scenario to repair or setup machines. An operator repairs a machine, a more skilled operator needs less time to get to the same result. If the operator leaves the workplace the machine won’t start until the repair is done by another operator.
You need for a continuous process at least 3 parallel objects to react on changes of the output of the system. Two objects work constantly and a third object will overtake the change. If the output is decreasing one of the working object is stopped and the third object start processing to get the total lower output of the system in total. If the process output is increasing the third processor output is in total the sum of one of the working objects plus the difference of the total new amount, then one of the working objects can be stopped, too. The heat exchanger system has on its input side a similar structure. You control process time or the throughput of the system in a control logic that checks the input (seawater) and the output (cooled water).
In a discrete model I would use operators to control and to represent the seawater process side. Each time or tick I can change the process parameters defined by labels. If all operators leaving the processor, the processor stops automatically.
Okay but can I use mixer in FloWork to represent heat exchanger?
@Nurul Shuhaida KS What is the logistics problem you want to research? Because the actual heat changing process is not something that FlexSim is created for. If you want to look at how big your tanks have to be then FlexSim is fine. The important factor is the flowrate of the hot water through the heat exchanger. That determines how long it takes to empty the tank. If you know how and when this tank is replenished you can say something about the size of the tank you need. For building these types of models check out the FloWorks module (FloWorks) or use the standard FlexSim Fluids library.
This is basically the model that I would like to develop. More or less. The seawater is pump to the heat exchanger and act as coolant. While the hot water is pump by the cooling water pump to the heat exchanger. Heat exchange there and the seawater will be discharge to the sea. While the cooled hot water will be collected in the cooling tank. So basically the two types of water never mix just heat exchange. and my research is to study the amount of cooling water collected at the specific simulated time given that each equipment are having the specific uptime and downtime distribution based on the analysis conducted previously.
This is the specification of the equipment. Those are the flow for each equipment.
This is the uptime
This is the downtime.
What difficulties are you having in building this model?
The difficulty is to find something to represent heat exchanger.
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