Journal of Chemical Engineering of Japan, Vol.47, No.2, 175-179, 2014
Application of a Drag Reduction Phenomenon Caused by Surfactant Solutions
In 1994, the first commercial application of surfactant drag reduction was conducted in Japan for the air conditioning system in the Shunan Regional Industry Promotion Center building. A commercially available drag-reducing additive (LSP-01) based on the mixture of a cationic surfactant, a counter ion, and corrosion inhibitors was developed based on the results of the project. Since 1995, LSP-01 has been used at more than 180 sites in building air conditioning systems throughout Japan. The drag-reducing technique was adopted recently for an air conditioning system in a skyscraper in Tokyo. Here, I measured the drag reduction and heat transfer characteristics during the cooling operation of a heat exchanger for a surfactant and a counter ion system, Ethoquad O/12 and NaSal. The analogy between the momentum and heat transfer for the drag-reducing flow is also discussed.