The drying process is a step of ceramic brick production which requires the control of process variables to provide a final product with a porous uniform structure, reducing superficial and volumetric defects and production costs. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an important tool in this process control, predicting the drying physical phenomenon and providing data that improve the industrial efficiency production. Furthermore, research involving CFD brick drying has neglected the effects of oven parameters, limiting the analysis only to the bricks. In this sense, the aim of this work is to numerically study the hot air-drying process of an industrial hollow ceramic brick in an oven at 70 °C. The results of the water mass and temperature distributions inside the brick, as well as moisture, temperature, velocity and pressure fields of the oven drying air at different process times are shown, analyzed and compared with experimental data, presenting a good agreement.
In the oil industry, pipelines (circular ducts) are widely used for the transportation of oil and yours derived. Because of their advantages, such as low operating cost and increased safety during transportation, pipelines have become indispensable for transporting oil in large quantities and for long distances. As an alternative to this problem, the transport of oil and water can be accomplished using ducts with an elliptical cross-section. Thus, this work has the objective of studying the flow of oil and water in cylindrical ducts with an elliptical cross-section by using the Ansys CFX software. Results of the velocity, pressure and volumetric fraction distributions of the oil and water phases are presented and analyzed. By applying the same inlet velocity to oil and water, revealed that the elliptical duct, with aspect ratio equal to 5.0, has a pressure drop less (84.2%) than the pressure drop obtained for one duct of circular cross-section (aspect ratio equal to 1.0).
The ceramic products processing requires a high consumption of energy. Through the drying and firing stages, the molded product is subjected to high temperatures in a kiln, to obtain the product with required levels of rigidity and resistance. This energy consumption must be evaluated to improve the energy efficiency of the process. This work presents the fundamentals of ceramic materials processing and perform a thermal analysis in an intermittent ceramic kiln. This analysis is based on heat transfer measurements, that occur in the kiln during the ceramic production stages, and effects of the thermal insulation thickness on the heat transfer between the kiln and the environment. The results showed that a considerable amount of energy is used to heat the kiln surfaces, that the greatest heat loss occurs by radiation of the kiln walls and that the use of thermal insulation provides considerable reduction in this heat loss, as well as the reduction in kiln external temperature, which minimize thermal discomfort and work accident risks.
Heavy oils, due to their high viscosity, have greater viscous resistance to flow, requiring high pumping power for transport and increasing operating cost. As an alternative to minimize this problem, the core-flow technique emerged, which consists of injecting water simultaneously with the oil flow, causing the heavy oil to be surrounded by a layer of water and flowing in the center of the duct without touching the pipe wall, consequently reducing the friction pressure gradient. Thus, this work aims to numerically study the core-annular flow of oil, water and gas in a cylindrical duct with an elliptical cross-section, considering a three-dimensional, isothermal and incompressible flow. For the numerical solution of the governing equations, the software Ansys FLUENT 15.0 was used. It was found that the lubrication provided by the water on the duct wall reduced the pressure variation by 7.20 times compared to the heavy oil single-phase flow, proving the good efficiency of the core-flow technique.
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