An Experimental Investigation of Water Vapor Condensation from Biofuel Flue Gas in a Model of Condenser, (2) Local Heat Transfer in a Calorimetric Tube with Water Injection

In order for the operation of the condensing heat exchanger to be efficient, the flue gas temperature at the inlet to the heat exchanger should be reduced so that condensation can start from the very beginning of the exchanger. A possible way to reduce the flue gas temperature is the injection of water into the flue gas flow. Injected water additionally moistens the flue gas and increases its level of humidity. Therefore, more favorable conditions are created for condensation and heat transfer. The results presented in the second paper of the series on condensation heat transfer indicate that water injection into the flue gas flow drastically changes the distribution of temperatures along the heat exchanger and enhances local total heat transfer. The injected water causes an increase in the local total heat transfer by at least two times in comparison with the case when no water is injected. Different temperatures of injected water mainly have a major impact on the local total heat transfer until almost the middle of the model of the condensing heat exchanger. From the middle part until the end, the heat transfer is almost the same at different injected water temperatures.

Energy Recovery from an Industrial Clothes Dryer Using a Condensing Heat Exchanger

The aim of this project was to design a condensing heat exchanger to recover waste heat from an industrial clothes dryer. Industrial cloth dryers are inefficient in their use of energy because almost all of the energy input in the dryer is wasted in the atmosphere, and thus there is great potential for heat recovery. This energy can be used to preheat the incoming cold water, and the conventional heater can then heat the water to a final temperature. The warm moist air from the dryer carries both sensible and latent heat, and in order to design this heat recovery condensing heat exchanger, the heat transfer by both mass and sensible heat has to be accounted for. The basis of this heat and mass transfer problem was the energy balance at the interface, and separate models for the calculation of latent and sensible heat transfer were used. The mass transfer coefficients were obtained from an analogy with heat transfer, and the unknown interface temperature was solved for iteratively. The data for this design was collected from a 20 kW dryer, and the heat recovery from that dryer was observed to be about 17.3%. This heat recovery condensing heat exchanger efficiency can be enhanced by the addition of more coils to the heat exchanger. An improvement in the overall results can be expected if a practical study is done on the condensation heat exchanger for an industrial cloth dryer.

Energy Recovery from an Industrial Clothes Dryer Using a Condensing Heat Exchanger

The aim of this project was to design a condensing heat exchanger to recover waste heat from an industrial clothes dryer. Industrial cloth dryers are inefficient in their use of energy because almost all of the energy input in the dryer is wasted in the atmosphere, and thus there is great potential for heat recovery. This energy can be used to preheat the incoming cold water, and the conventional heater can then heat the water to a final temperature. The warm moist air from the dryer carries both sensible and latent heat, and in order to design this heat recovery condensing heat exchanger, the heat transfer by both mass and sensible heat has to be accounted for. The basis of this heat and mass transfer problem was the energy balance at the interface, and separate models for the calculation of latent and sensible heat transfer were used. The mass transfer coefficients were obtained from an analogy with heat transfer, and the unknown interface temperature was solved for iteratively. The data for this design was collected from a 20 kW dryer, and the heat recovery from that dryer was observed to be about 17.3%. This heat recovery condensing heat exchanger efficiency can be enhanced by the addition of more coils to the heat exchanger. An improvement in the overall results can be expected if a practical study is done on the condensation heat exchanger for an industrial cloth dryer.

An Experimental Investigation of Water Vapor Condensation from Biofuel Flue Gas in a Model of Condenser, (1) Base Case: Local Heat Transfer without Water Injection

Waste heat recovery from flue gas based on water vapor condensation is an important issue as the waste heat recovery significantly increases the efficiency of the thermal power units. General principles for designing of this type of heat exchangers are known rather well; however, investigations of the local characteristics necessary for the optimization of those heat exchangers are very limited. Investigations of water vapor condensation from biofuel flue gas in the model of a vertical condensing heat exchanger were performed without and with water injection into a calorimetric tube. During the base-case investigations, no water was injected into the calorimetric tube. The results showed that the humidity and the temperature of inlet flue gas have a significant effect on the local and average heat transfer. For some regimes, the initial part of the condensing heat exchanger was not effective in terms of heat transfer because there the flue gas was cooled by convection until its temperature reached the dew point temperature. The results also showed that, at higher Reynolds numbers, there was an increase in the length of the convection prevailing region. After that region, a sudden increase was observed in heat transfer due to water vapor condensation.

High Temperature Electrical Charger to Reduce Particulate Emissions from Small Biomass-Fired Boilers

New particulate matter (PM) filtering technologies are needed to meet the emission regulations for small combustion appliances. In this work, we investigate the performance of a novel electrical particle filtration system, the single needle shielded corona charger (SCC), which offers an advantageous solution for PM control in boilers by enhancing particulate deposition within existing boiler sections. Experiments under different operating conditions of a wood-fired boiler were performed, wherein the SCC was installed upstream of either a condensing heat exchanger (CHX) or a cyclone. PM reduction was found to be strongly affected by the SCC temperature and the following collection surface area, and reached its highest reduction efficiency of >90% at the temperature range of 400–500 °C when operating in combination with a CHX. The SCC–cyclone combination was less efficient, providing a 27% PM reduction, as a result of the low surface area and residence time in the cyclone. These results indicate that the SCC can feasibly provide particle filtration when combined with a CHX, wet scrubber, or a cyclone to meet the new emission regulation requirements. The system is best suited for small-scale boilers but can be scaled up to larger boilers by increasing the number of corona chargers.

Enhancement of power efficiency of evaporating-condensing heat exchangers

The aspects of heat transfer in evaporating-condensing heat exchangers conditioning their thermophysical merits and advantages as regards routine heat transferring devices are determined and analyzed. It is shown that implementation of one of these aspects which is transformation of heat flux density in its transferring from “hot” medium to “cold” one by changing the ratio of the lengths of the evaporation and condensation zones of evaporating-condensing heat transferring elements (positioning of tube plate separating the channels with heat exchanging media) allows studying optimization of the said ratio in respect to getting the minimal thermal and aerodynamic resistances of evaporating-condensing heat exchangers. Thus, the concerned work on one of the parts of such study is aimed to derive the correlations for optimal ratio of evaporation and condensation zones in gas-to-gas heat exchangers based on vertical transversely finned tubular thermosiphons to spend the minimal power required to pump heat-exchanging media under the specified conditions of heat transfer. As an objective function of optimization the dimensionless ratio of transferred heat flux to the sum of the powers provided to pump the heat-exchanging media through the heat-exchanger channels is accepted. This ratio is called a factor of heat exchanger power efficiency. In the concerned study the functional dependence of dimensionless power efficiency factor of evaporating-condensing heat exchanger upon dimensionless ratio of the lengths of evaporation and condensation zones is derived. The performed extremum research of the dependence revealed that it has an extremum for an actual range of the determining parameters and this extremum is the maximum. The study resulted in an equation of optimal relationship between the zone lengths (the heights of the channels occupied by flowing heat-exchanging media) that corresponds to the maximal factor of power efficiency.