A Numerical Study on the Performance of a Two-Stage Ejector-Diffuser System

The conventional ejector-diffuser system makes use of high pressure primary stream to propel the secondary stream through pure shear action for the purposes of transport or compression of fluid. It has been widely used in many industrial applications such as seawater desalination, solar refrigeration, marine engineering, etc. The present study is performed numerically to study the performance of a two-stage ejector-diffuser system. The detailed flow phenomenon of the ejector-diffuser system has been critically predicted by means of the numerical approach using compressible Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. The axi-symmetric supersonic ejector-diffuser flow has been solved by a fully implicit finite volume scheme with a two-equation k-omega turbulence model. The numerical results are validated with existing experimental data. Detailed flow physics and their contributions on ejector performance are detected to compare both single-stage and two-stage ejectors. The performance improvement on the ejector-diffuser system is discussed in terms of the mass flux ratio and the coefficient of power.