Control of Heat Removal from Multi-Row Plain Tube Banks Typical for Subsea Coolers

The paper presents the computed data on water flow and heat transfer through a staggered tube bank typical for subsea cooling. The numerical study of unsteady buoyancy-induced flow through cooling units that could be used also as ocean thermal energy extractors have been performed for Gr = 2×10
⁵
. Three computational models of the cooler are considered: the tube bank without any bounding walls, the tube bank with vertical bounding walls and the tube bank with the side walls and the bottom wall. The direct numerical simulation is applied to model the draft water flow and heat transfer at the Prandtl number of 6.09. Tube bank external heat transfer enhancement in the presence of the bounding walls is reported and discussed.