CFD analysis of a tubular heat exchanger for the conditioning of olive paste

The use of a heat exchanger for the conditioning of the olive paste could enhance the olive oil extraction process. Particularly, paste pre-heating could reduce the malaxation time and, most of all, improve the temperature control during this process (e.g., 27 °C). In this study, a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of a tubular heat exchanger was carried out to better understand the influence of the inlet conditions of the olive paste on thermal and hydrodynamic behavior within it. CFD analysis was performed with SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation (ver.2016). The heat exchanger consists of a tube-in-tube module, in which the inner tube was fed with the olive paste, while the jacket was filled of hot water. The main aim was that to predict the heat transfer and pressure drop in paste side of the exchanger. Multiple analyses by varying the mass flow rate and inlet temperature of the paste were carried out, and temperature and pressure drop were estimated. The numerical model has proved very useful in identifying the main factors affecting the optimization of the heat exchanger in order to improve the extraction process of the olive paste.