Direct Contact Condenser Rig
The contact condenser rig implemented in Genoa TPG Laboratory is constituted by a once-through steam generator able to provide up to 5 g/s of steam and a direct contact heat exchanger derived from saturator and humidification towers technologies. At the tower bottom there is the air inlet, the air is previously mixed with steam coming from steam generator and heated to a temperature set point, at the tower top there is the cooling water inlet. In the tower the two flows, cold water from top to bottom and hot humid air in counter direction, meet each other to exchange heat and mass.
This combined effect of heat and mass transfer makes the exchange efficiency dramatically increase. The rig is equipped with a large amount of sensors and thermocouples monitored by a LabView Interface.
The direct contact condenser, also used as a saturator for microHAT cycles, can be simulated by a transient model named TRANSAT coded in MATLAB-Simulink environment.
