Congratulations to Valentin Scheffel on his diploma defense

On August 12, 2024, Valentin Scheffel defended his diploma thesis on "Numerical investigation of a two-phase flow in a liquid separator". This thesis was supervised by Maximilian Wendt (SKW Stickstoffwerke Piesteritz GmbH) as well as Dipl.-Ing. Montadhar Guesmi and M.Sc. Richard Schab from the Chair of Energy Process Engineering at TU Dresden.

Mr. Scheffel's task was to evaluate the flow control of a liquid separator in an ammonia plant in which the synthesis gas required for ammonia synthesis is compressed in a multi-stage turbo compressor. The aim was to investigate how the residual moisture contained in the gas can be separated as condensate between the compressor stages. The focus was particularly on the separator, which acts as a liquid separator in the interstage cooling between the first and second stage of the synthesis gas compressor.

The investigation of this task initially comprised an in-depth literature search on the topics of modeling two-phase flows, the process of ammonia synthesis and the design of liquid separators. These theoretical principles formed the basis for the subsequent practical work.

In the next step, a numerical flow simulation was set up and carried out in ANSYS in order to investigate the flow conditions in the separator. This simulation made it possible to analyze various operating states, including normal operation, start-up of the system and an overload case.

Finally, a comparison of different flow control variants and separator designs was carried out. The aim of this analysis was to find out how the flow routing in the separator can be changed in order to prevent liquid entrainment and thus increase the efficiency and safety of the process.

We congratulate Mr. Scheffel on successfully defending his diploma and wish him all the best for the future.