An Approximate Relation of a Regenerative Heat Exchanger Effectiveness in Off-Design Conditions

A regenerative heat exchanger is an important component of a thermal system in power units. It is crucial to know the performance of the regenerative heat exchanger in off-design conditions during its design and operation. Advanced regenerative heat exchanger simulators have been developed for many years to describe the performance in off-design conditions. The simulators involve the use of equations for mass, momentum, and energy balances and criteria relations for heat transfer coefficients; the geometrical data of the heat exchanger are also required. Due to high complexity, the calculations are performed iteratively. For this paper, a different approach was taken: The heat exchanger was considered as a “black box.” Based on the data obtained from the simulator, the effect of input variables on the output ones was investigated, so as to propose a relation describing the regenerative heat exchanger performance. To assess this performance, heat transfer effectiveness was proposed, and its two variants were considered. Since two heat transfer effectiveness definitions were assumed, two approximate relations concerning the regenerative heat exchanger were determined. The relations were verified against data obtained from a simulator of a high-pressure regenerative heat exchanger in a medium-power steam condensing unit. A satisfactory accuracy of the proposed relations was obtained.     

太阳能再生式除湿换热器动态除湿性能研究

提出了一种新型再生式除湿换热器,建立了物理和数学模型。通过实验得到了该除湿换热器的实际动态除湿性能;将除湿器除湿性能的模拟结果与实验结果进行比较,验证了数学模型的可靠性。研究结果表明:该文研制的再生式除湿换热器具有良好的除湿性能,在给定工况(温度为24.7℃,含湿量为12.41g/kg)下除湿率可达到43.8%;还分析了处理风速、再生温度以及除湿换热器厚度对除湿性能和压降的影响,获得了使除湿换热器性能最佳的管排、翅片间距和迎面风速参数。     

蜂窝状陶瓷蓄热式热交换器的设计计算

依据填充球蓄热体传热的数学解析方法,经传热分析和类比,导出蜂窝状陶瓷蓄热器的设计计算方法。经实验验证表明,类推得到的蜂窝状陶瓷蓄热器的设计计算方法具有较高的精度,可以很好地满足工程应用的需要,为蜂窝状陶瓷蓄热器的设计计算提供了参考依据。     

Passive cooling in a low-energy office building

In office buildings, the use of passive cooling techniques combined with a reduced cooling load may result in a good thermal summer comfort and therefore save cooling energy consumption. This is shown in the low-energy office building ‘SD Worx’ in Kortrijk (Belgium), in which natural night ventilation and an earth-to-air heat exchanger are applied. In winter, the supply air is successively heated by the earth-to-air heat exchanger and the regenerative heat exchanger, which recovers the heat from the exhaust air. In summer, the earth-to-air heat exchanger cools the ventilation air by day. In addition, natural night ventilation cools down the exposed structure which has accumulated the heat of the previous day. In this article the overall thermal comfort in the office building is evaluated by means of measuring and simulation results. Measurements of summer 2002 are discussed and compared to simulations with a coupled thermal and ventilation simulation model TRNSYS-COMIS. The simulations are used to estimate the relative importance of the different techniques. The evaluation shows that passive cooling has an important impact on the thermal summer comfort in the building. Furthermore, natural night ventilation appears to be much more effective than an earth-to-air heat exchanger to improve comfort.     

蓄热式管壳换热器传热特性研究

针对热电联产机组供热期发电负荷受供热量限制,机组调峰能力下降、电力系统弃风弃光现象严重的问题,设计了一种新型蓄热式管壳换热器。利用相变材料蓄/放热过程中温度接近恒定、释放潜热量大等优点,选取石蜡为相变材料,换热器相变区作为换热单元,采用控制变量法,针对传热流体流速、相变材料导热系数及相变层厚度等关键因素,对换热单元的蓄/放热过程进行数值模拟。结果表明:提高传热流体流速可增强换热单元蓄热能力,缩短相变材料完全熔化时间,放热过程中为保证换热器输出端热量,应适当选取传热流体流速;使用复合材料提高相变材料导热系数能够增强换热单元的换热能力,在相同传热流体流速下使换热单元平均传热系数较纯石蜡工况提升2倍以上;增加相变层厚度在放热过程中可延长传热流体出口温度维持的时间。     

Experimental investigation of wraparound loop heat pipe heat exchanger used in energy efficient air handling units

Building legislation along with environmental and comfort concerns are increasingly driving designers of building services and air conditioning equipment towards more energy efficient solutions. Heat pipe technology is emerging as a viable, efficient and environmentally-sound technology for applications in efficient air handling unit designs. In this paper, an experimental investigation on the thermal performance of an air-to-air heat exchanger, which utilises heat pipe technology, will be presented. The heat exchanger consisted of 7 loop heat pipes with finned evaporator and condenser sections. The heat exchanger was fully instrumented to test for the effect of the variation of heat load and the air velocity, through the heat exchanger, on the overall thermal resistance of the loops. The values of the effectiveness of the heat pipe heat exchanger are shown to vary with the air velocity as expected but the results also allow the prediction of effectiveness variation with the heat load and operating temperature (previously assumed to be constant). The results allow an interpretation of the overall thermal performance of each loop heat pipe as a function of the load and air velocity. The paper concludes with a theoretical analysis of the energy savings that would be expected when utilising the technology in a representative application.     

Regenerative vapor cycle with isobutane as working fluid

One of the methods of generating geothermal power is to use a suitable working fluid which extracts heat from geothermal fluids and generates power in a closed cycle. This paper presents a discussion of an improvement of the basic closed cycle with isobutane as a working fluid. A regenerative heat exchanger is added for heating the cold condensate of isobutane with the highly superheated exhaust. The addition of this heat exchanger can result in a significant reduction in the size of heat rejection equipment. Furthermore, the waste brine of the improved system is at such a high temperature that the waste heat can be economically utilized for desalting water for industrial uses.     

Online Fouling Detection of Domestic Hot Water Heat Exchangers

Due to hardness of cold water supply in many countries, there is a risk of fouling in domestic hot water (DHW) counterflow plate heat exchangers. The scaling will result in increased resistance to heat transfer, which has negative effects on the economics of the district heating network. A common approach is to clean or change the heat exchanger periodically, which can be expensive if only limited fouling has occurred (unnecessary) or if a higher than expected scaling layer has formed (inefficiency). A better approach is to monitor the state of the heat exchangers and clean them when actually required. This would result in more energy-efficient operation and provide an optimum schedule for heat exchanger cleaning. This can be simple if the heat exchangers are operating under steady-state conditions; however, if large variations in the inlets are experienced, as is the case with the mass flows in DHW heat exchangers, it quickly becomes impossible with standard methods. In this paper it is proposed to monitor the state of the heat exchanger online by using measurements that are easily obtainable under normal operation and applying fast mathematical models to estimate the overall heat transfer coefficient of the heat exchanger. The results show that the methods proposed can be used to detect fouling in DHW heat exchangers.     

Exergy analysis and optimisation of waste heat recovery systems for cement plants

In the last decades, heat recovery systems have received much attention due to the increase in fuel cost and the increase in environmental issues. In this study, different heat recovery systems for a cement plant are compared in terms of electricity generation and exergy analysis. The heat sources are available in high temperature (HT) and low temperature (LT). For the HT section a dual pressure Rankine cycle, a simple dual pressure Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) and a regenerative dual pressure ORC are compared. Also, for the LT section, a simple ORC is compared with transcritical carbon dioxide cycle. To find the best system, an optimisation algorithm is applied to all proposed cycles. The results show that for the HT section, regenerative ORC has the highest exergy efficiency and has the capability of producing nearly 7?MW electricity for a cement factory with the capacity of 3400 ton per day. The main reason for this is introducing the regenerative heat exchanger to the cycle. For the LT section, ORC showed a better performance than the CO₂ cycle. It is worth mentioning that the generated power in this section is far lower than that of the HT section and is equal to nearly 300?kW.     

Parallel-Flow Heat Exchangers with Ambient Thermal Interaction

A mathematical model is developed to study the performance of a parallel-flow heat exchanger in which both fluid streams are interacting thermally with the surroundings. The fluid temperatures are found to be dependent on the magnitude of the ambient temperature relative to fluid inlet temperatures, the ratios of conductances between the fluids and the ambient and the interfluid conductance, the ratio of minimum to maximum fluid capacities, and the number of transfer units, NTU, for the heat exchanger. Two heat exchanger effectiveness criteria, one each for the hot and cold fluids, are used to study performance. The effectiveness is found to be adversely affected by increasing conductance ratios, increasing NTU, and increasing temperature difference between the ambient and the fluid of interest. For very high values of the conductance ratios, the heat exchanger will not perform as expected and both fluid temperatures will approach that of the ambient. The parallel-flow arrangement is compared to counterflow and is found to be less effective under the external heat transfer condition.     

Numerical study of conjugated heat transfer in metal foam filled double-pipe

The two equation numerical model has been applied for parallel flow double-pipe heat exchanger filled with open cell metal foams. The model fully considered solid–fluid conjugated heat transfer process coupling heat conduction and convection in open cell metal foam solid matrix, interface wall and fluid in both inner and annular space in heat exchanger. The non-Darcy effect and the wall thickness are also taken into account. The interface wall heat flux distribution along the axial direction is predicted. The numerical model is firstly verified and then the influences of solid heat conductivity, metal foam porosity, pore density, relative heat conductivity and inner tube radius of the heat exchanger on dimensionless temperature distribution and heat transfer performance of heat exchanger are numerically studied. It is revealed that the proposed numerical model can effectively display the real physical heat transfer process in the double pipe heat exchanger. It is expected to provide useful information for the design of metal foam filled heat exchanger.     

Numerical study of an exhaust heat recovery system using corrugated tube heat exchanger with twisted tape inserts

The purpose of this work is to investigate gas to liquid heat transfer performance of concentric tube heat exchanger with twisted tape inserted corrugated tube and to evaluate its impact on engine performance and economics through heat recovery from the exhaust of a heavy duty diesel generator (120 ekW rated load). This type of heat exchanger is expected to be inexpensive to install and effective in heat transfer and to have minimal effect on exhaust emissions of diesel engines. This type of heat exchanger has been investigated for liquid to liquid heat transfer at low Reynolds number by few investigators, but not for gas to liquid heat transfer. In this paper, a detail of heat transfer performance is investigated through simulations using computer software. The software is first justified by comparing the simulation results with the developed renowned correlations. Simulations are then conducted for concentric tube heat exchanger with different twisted tape configuration for optimal design. The results show that the enhancement in the rate of heat transfer in annularly corrugated tube heat exchanger with twisted tape is about 235.3% and 67.26% when compared with the plain tube and annularly corrugated tube heat exchangers without twisted tapes respectively. Based on optimal results, for a 120 ekW diesel generator, the application of corrugated tube with twisted tape concentric tube heat exchanger can save 2250 gal of fuel, $11,330 of fuel cost annually and expected payback of 1 month. In addition, saving in heating fuel also reduces in CO₂ emission by 23 metric tons a year.     

Heat and mass transfer characteristics of a rotating regenerative total energy wheel

An experimental investigation has been carried out to determine the operating performance of a rotating regenerative total energy wheel (TEW). A total energy wheel is a device which conserves both sensible and latent energies. It transfers heat from a warmer to a cooler airstream while simultaneously transferring moisture from a more humid to a less humid airstream. The effectiveness of a TEW device has been measured in a special experimental facility which incorporates features that enable the obtainment of data of high accuracy. The heart of the facility is a spacious, compartmented plenum chamber made from extruded, closed-cell polystyrene which is free of extraneous heat transfer and air leakage. The plenum allows for well-defined inlet and exit conditions for the heat/moisture exchanger being evaluated. Only the plenum need be reconfigured to accommodate each heat/moisture exchanger type, a task that can be performed in a day. The remainder of the facility is universal for all heat/moisture exchangers. Most of the instrumentation is located in the universal part of the facility and is not affected by plenum reconfigurations.     

管壳式蓄热装置的设计及蓄热单元三维数值模拟与优化

为弥补太阳能间歇性的缺点,设计了管壳式蓄热装置并建立了一个三维的、非稳态的、液态石蜡包含自然对流的相变蓄热装置模型,在该模型中取一个蓄热单元进行模拟研究。蓄热单元为圆柱体,内部放置石蜡,中心位置为传热管,热水通过传热管和传热管上的翅片对石蜡进行加热。对蓄热单元的蓄热过程进行了三维数值模拟,分别分析比较了有无自然对流条件,不同蓄热单元放置,以及增加内外翅片情况下蓄热单元的蓄放热性能,研究结果可为蓄能装置及集成系统的开发提供理论依据。     

A volume element model (VEM) for energy systems engineering

This work presents a simplified modeling and simulation approach for energy systems engineering that is capable of providing quick and accurate responses during system design. For that, the laws of conservation are combined with available empirical and theoretical correlations to quantify the diverse types of flows that cross the system and produce a simplified tridimensional mathematical model, namely a volume element model (VEM). The physical domain of interest is discretized in space, thus producing a system of algebraic and ODEs with respect to time, whose solution delivers the project variables spatial distribution and dynamic response. In order to illustrate the application of the VEM in energy systems engineering, three example problems are considered: (i) a regenerative heat exchanger; (ii) a power electronic building block (PEBB); and (iii) a notional all‐electric ship. The same mathematical model was used to analyze problems (ii) and (iii), that is, the thermal management of heat‐generating equipment packaging. In the examples, the converged mesh had a total of 20, 2000, and 7725 volume elements. The third problem led to the largest simulation, which for steady‐state cases took between 5 and 10 min of computational time to reach convergence and for the ship dynamic response 50 min (i.e., 80,000 s of real time). The regenerative heat exchanger model demonstrated how VEM allowed for the coexistence of different phases (subsystems) within the same volume element. The thermal management model was adjusted and experimentally validated for the PEBB system, and it was possible to perform a parametric and dynamic analysis of the PEBB and of the notional all‐electric ship. Therefore, because of the observed combination of accuracy and low computational time, it is expected that the model could be used as an efficient tool for design, control, and optimization in energy systems engineering. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

再生式换热器的实验研究与数值模拟

为了解再生式换热器工作特性,采用Matlab软件计算简化后的模型,对换热器内流体和固体的温度分布进行了数值模拟,并进行了实验验证.研究了蓄热体长度、比表面积、速度和蓄热体材质对换热效果的影响.结果表明,面积和流速对换热效果影响明显,而改变蓄热体材质基本无影响.     

Thermodynamic analysis of high-temperature regenerative organic Rankine cycles using siloxanes as working fluids

A recent novel adjustment of the Span-Wagner equation of state for siloxanes, used as working fluids in high-temperature organic Rankine cycles, is applied in a mathematical model to solve cycles under several working conditions. The proposed scheme includes a thermo-oil intermediate heat circuit between the heat source and the organic Rankine cycle. Linear and cyclic siloxanes are assayed in saturated, superheated and supercritical cycles. The cycle includes an internal heat exchanger (regenerative cycle), although a non-regenerative scheme is also solved. In the first part of the study, a current of combustion gases cooled to close to their dew point temperature is taken as the reference heat source. In the second part, the outlet temperature of the heat source is varied over a wide range, determining appropriate fluids and schemes for each thermal level. Simple linear (MM, MDM) siloxanes in saturated regenerative schemes show good efficiencies and ensure thermal stability of the working fluid.     

A Comparison of Metal-Foam Heat Exchangers to Compact Multilouver Designs for Air-Side Heat Transfer Applications

High-porosity metal foams, with novel thermal, mechanical, electrical, and acoustic properties, are being more widely used in various industrial applications. In this paper, open-cell aluminum foam is considered as a highly compact replacement for conventional louver fins in brazed aluminum heat exchangers. A model based on the ?-N_TU method is developed to compare the flat-tube, serpentine louver-fin heat exchanger to the flat-tube metal-foam heat exchanger. The two heat exchangers are subjected to identical thermal-hydraulic requirements, and volume, mass, and cost of the metal-foam and louver-fin designs are compared. The results show that the same performance is achieved using the metal-foam heat exchanger but a lighter and smaller heat exchanger is required. However, the cost of the metal-foam heat exchanger is currently much higher than that of the louver-fin heat exchanger, because of the high price of metal foams. If the price of metal foam falls to equal that of louver-fin stock (per unit mass), then the metal-foam heat exchanger will be less expensive, smaller, and lighter than the louver-fin heat exchanger, with identical thermal performance.     

Thermal Analysis of Vertical Ground Exchangers of Heat Pumps

The heat rate absorbed from the ground by a vertical ground exchanger of a heat pump unit is considered. The aim is to investigate the time variation of this energy rate for a set of parameters. The analyzed set of alternatives encompasses arrangements of the exchanger tubes, values of the temperature of the heat carrier, thermal parameters of the ground, periodic operation of the compressor, and, when appropriate, different values of seepage velocity. To achieve this goal, the transient temperature distributions in the soil surrounding the ground exchanger are evaluated. The calculations are carried out using both PATRAN-THERMAL, a commercial finite volume code, and FEMCONV, an in-home FEM package. Characteristic features of the latter are discussed briefly along with some results of simulations for a ground exchanger with tube-in-tube (Field-type) elements. It is shown that in every case, the heat rate absorbed from the ground depends on the season and reaches the minimum value in the second part of winter. As expected, a strong influence of the arrangement of the exchanger tubes and the motion of moisture is observed. It is shown that if the prices of the electric energy are variable during a day, it may be profitable to operate an HP unit compressor in a periodic regime. The approximate values of the heat pump unit coefficient of performance, defined as the ratio of heat output of HP and compressor driving power, are evaluated. It is pointed out that this coefficient depends on the heat carrier temperature, and therefore this temperature may also be a subject of optimization calculations.     

Twisted bundle heat exchangers performance evaluation by CFD (CJ12/5054)

Shell and tube heat exchanger with single twisted tube bundle in five different twist angles, are studied using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and compared to the conventional shell and tube heat exchanger with single segmental baffles. Effect of shell-side nozzles configurations on heat exchanger performance is studied as well. Heat transfer rate and pressure drop are the main issues investigated in the paper. The results show that, for the same shell-side flow rate, the heat transfer coefficient of heat exchanger with twisted tube bundle is lower than that of the heat exchanger with segmental baffles while shell-side pressure drop of the former is even much lower than that of the latter. The comparison of heat transfer rate per unit pressure drop versus shell-side mass flow rate shows that heat exchanger with twisted tube bundle in both cases of perpendicular and tangential shell-side nozzles, has significant performance advantages over the segmental baffled heat exchanger. Optimum bundle twist angles for such exchangers are found to be 65 and 55° for all shell side flow rates.