The natural convection differs fundamentally from the forced

convection. The difference is thermodynamic and mathematical as well, as

thermodynamic the flow happened naturally which is driven by the buoyancy
effect regarding to gravitational acceleration and density variations from one
fluid layer and another. Mathematically the flow field is intimately coupled
to the temperature field, as the temperature variations within the fluid can
induce density variations hence a buoyancy driven flow.
For natural convection, we follow the evolution of the fluid packet
through the imaginary closed duct that holds the cellular flow. Starting from
the bottom of the heated wall, the packet is heated by the wall and expands
as it rises to lower pressures in the hydrostatic pressure field maintained by
the reservoir. Later on, along the down flowing branch of the cycle, the fluid
packed is cooled by the reservoir and compressed as it reaches the depth of
reservoir. From the circuit executed by each fluid packet we learn that the
cellular flow is the succession of four processes, which is heating, expansion,
cooling, and compression.
For natural convection that occurred in enclosure, the phenomenon is as
varied as geometry and orientation of the enclosure. In engineering issued
the enclosure phenomena can loosely be organized into two large classes:
1. Enclosure heated from below
2. Enclosure heated from side.
The first class refers to the functioning of thermal insulations, oriented
horizontally, for example the heat transfer through flat-roof attic space, and
the second class is representatives of applications such as solar collector,
double wall insulations and air circulations through the rooms in a building.
The case of enclosure attachment in shell-to-skirt junction area of
coke drum can be regarded as the second case which the side of the wall
become heated. The attachment of hot box in shell-to-skirt junction area of
coke drum aims to lowering the thermal stress in that area which happened
because of temperature differences.
The enclosure in shell-to-skirt junction area is nearly triangular
shaped except fillet shaped in the upper part of the enclosure which is the
part of shell-to-skirt junction area. The analysis of natural convection in this
area being analyze using ANSYS 16 in transient mode because of 5 cycle
stages which occurred in coke drum. The completion of this problem is using
transient analysis where the heated wall temperature based of each stage
cycle time which affected coke drum wall.
For the thing that aforementioned, hot box in coke drum, first we have
to know what coke drum is and the purpose of using coke drum.
Coke drum are categorized as pressure vessel, operated in batch
process mode and normally they are arranged in pairs with alternating cycles
between two drums. Coke drum applied for four cycle stages which are pre-
heating, filling, cooling, and cutting stages. Typical stage of coke drum is
around 2800 minutes respectively for one cycle from pre heating stages until
cutting stages. The stages of coke drum are as follow. The empty coke drum
injecting with steam and hot vapor to targeted temperature of 3500C which
occurred around 400-500 minutes, after the preheating stage the hot feed
material is injected to a target temperature of 440-5000C for around 1500
minutes. In filling stages thermal cracking process occurred.in thermal
cracking process the lighter fractions and heavy fractions will be separated,
the lighter fractions will be send to fractionation tower to produce more
valuable liquid product. In cooling stages cooling steam is injected for around
400 minutes and the rest is cutting stage to cut all the remaining coke from
the wall of the coke drum. Typically the internal pressure of the coke drum
ranges from 300 kPa to 350 kPa.
Hot feed material that entered coke drum had temperature above
5000C, however it was rarely mentioned that the temperature in the shell
skin exceed 4500C. It is possibly due to the complex fluid phase and behavior
inside the coke drum and the insulting effect of coke deposit in the inner wall
of coke drum shell. High thermal resistivity and coke porous form
During the high rate preheating stage the temperature gradient
become very high due to rapid heating and in the cooling stage the high
temperature gradient due to the rapid cooling. There are two peaks of stress
intensities which occurred in coke drum, in pre heating stage and in cooling
stage. In pre-heating stage it is controllable by controlling temperature of hot
feed material when it entering coke drum but in the cooling stage the peak
stress unpredictable due to complex coke formation inside of the coke drum.
Such phenomena reported by Oka et.al, about interesting phenomenon that
occurred in cooling stage. In the cooling stage the quenched water cools come
from the bottommost of the coke drum, in which we can make an assumption
that the lower location of the coke drum should be the part that firstly
experienced temperature drop. But in fact this assumption is not always
agreeable, some part of the coke drum decreasing in temperature quickly
than some of lower parts of coke drum. It because the solid coke formations
inside of coke drum is complex phenomenon.