Design Considerations and Heat Transfer Enhancement of CFB Heat Exchangers for Flue Gas Heat Recovery

Now-a-day’s energy recovery process in the industry is a common practice for improving the production process while major concern goes to environment. The performance of the heat exchangers, used for the purpose of recovering energy, decreases continuously with time due to fouling depending on surface temperature, surface condition, construction material, fluid velocity, flow geometry and fluid composition. To overcome the fouling of fly ash on the heat transfer surface and erosion and periodical cleaning which are the major drawbacks in conventional heat exchangers for flue gas heat recovery, a no-distributor-circulating-fluidized-bed (NDCFB) heat exchanger with automatic particle controlling is devised. One of the main advantages of this model is the reduced pressure drop through the entire heat exchanger system, while increasing heat transfer performance. The research started with a single riser system with multiple down comers and multi-riser system is also studied. The heat transfer performance and pressure drop have been evaluated through experiments for these gas-to-water lab scale heat exchanger systems. However, due to the operational complexity, these two models are not readily applicable to real applications. As a derivation of the previous studies regarding the no-distributor CFB heat exchangers, third generation model of the heat exchanger is now under investigation.