Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering and Applied Sciences: Research Areas

Article Title: COMPUTATIONAL MODELING OF TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION OF STREAMS IN RECUPERATIVE HEAT EXCHANGER
by Oyelami A.T., Prof. Adejuyigbe S.B. and Olusunle S.O.O

Abstract:
Fuel economy now plays a central role in design considerations for fuel-fired melting furnaces. Apart from the fuel economy consideration, the need for increase in thermal efficiency and environmental friendliness of operation necessitated the usage of heat exchanger for the recycling of waste gases in the operation of a melting furnace. An attempt is therefore made in this work to computationally model and simulate the temperature distribution of both hot and cold streams along the length of a double-pipe recuperative heat exchanger incorporated in a ferrous-melting furnace. This was done by modelling a conjugate heat transfer phenomenon through Turbulent Fluid-Thermal Interaction. The computational analysis done was based on the assumption that the temperature and radiant characteristics of the waste gases are taken to be constant over the whole furnace volume; the temperature in various points of metal surface is constant and the heat flow transferred from the gases to furnace lining by convection is taken to be equal the heat flow given up by the lining to the surrounding. The resulting equations were analysed and solved. When the results obtained were used to graphically illustrate the temperature variation of heat transfer agents along the length of heat exchanger at different times for a parallel flow, it was observed to conform greatly to the theoretical pattern of the flow as obtained from the literature.

Keywords: computational modeling, conjugate-heat-transfer, fluid-thermal-interaction, heat exchanger, furnace

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