Waste Heat and Mass Recovery from Boiler Exhaust Gases in a New Generation District Heating System: Energy and Exergy Analysis

Abstract

The study performs energy and exergy analyses for each component such as boilers, buildings, distribution networks and heat exchangers of a new generation district heating system. Energy and exergy efficiencies are compared for all system components, and energy and exergy losses are presented using Sankey and Grassman diagrams. Three flue gas condensers with finned bundles are designed for different capacities of boilers that intend to recover water and heat from the waste flue gas in the district heating system due to high flue gas energy losses. Colburn-Hougen and one-dimensional finite difference methods are used to design the flue gas condensers with the MATLAB program. The exergy analysis showed that the exergy input to the system is lost by 4.52% from the distribution networks, 4.15% from all buildings and 2.18% from the flue gas. In the system, the energy and exergy efficiencies of the boilers are calculated to be 87.23% and 17.32%, respectively, and the heat loss from the flue gas is found to be 12%. The design results show that the values of mass convection coefficient (km) for all flue gas condensers decrease from 0.0706 at the inlet condensation zone to 0.0354 towards the outlet. The total condensation rate and condensation efficiency are found to be 86 kg/h and 60%, respectively, for the 2500 kW boiler. © 2023, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals.