Numerical Simulation of a Canadian Well With Several Circumferential Rows of Internal Vortex Generators

Canadian Wells exploit the quasi-stable underground temperature throughout the year for cooling and heating applications. This type of heat exchangers is used in residential buildings, agriculture and industry. Implementing Vortex Generators (VGs) is intended to disturb the thermal and dynamic boundary layers developing in the near-wall regions leading to the increase of the heat transfer coefficient. The present work investigates the positive effects of a sequence of several rows of VGs. The commercial code ANSYS FLUENT was used to perform numerical simulations mimicking the variation of the seasonal operational conditions occurring within one year. The ambient conditions were considered for the city of Constantine located in the east of Algeria at an altitude of 600m over the sea level. Sinusoidal functions of time and depth, were used for the yearly variations of the ground and air temperatures. Parallelepiped VGs were considered in this study. The Reynolds number was in the range Re = 14975–42789. The results illustrated a contrasting effect of the Reynolds number on the heat transfer coefficient and the temperature difference between the inlet and outlet of the Canadian Well. In terms of number of VGs rows, the beneficial heat transfer effects were observed till the fifth row only.