Experimental study on heat pipe assisted heat exchanger used for industrial waste heat recovery

Steel industry plays an important role economically in China. A great amount of hot waste liquids and gases are discharged into environment during many steelmaking processes. These waste liquids and gases have crucial energy saving potential, especially for steel slag cooling process. It could be possible to provide energy saving by employing a waste heat recovery system (WHRS). The optimum operation condition was assessed by integrating the first and the second law of thermodynamics for a water-water heat pipe heat exchanger (HPHE) for a slag cooling process in steel industry. The performance characteristics of a HPHE has been investigated experimentally by analyzing heat transfer rate, heat transfer coefficient, effectiveness, exergy efficiency and number of heat transfer units (NTU). A specially designed on-line cleaning device was used to clean the heat exchange tubes and enhance heat transfer. The results indicated that the exergy efficiency increased with the increment of waste water mass flow rate at constant fresh water mass flow rate, while the effectiveness decreased at the same operation condition. As the waste water mass flow rate varied from 0.83 m3/h to 1.87 m3/h, the effectiveness and exergy efficiency varied from 0.19 to 0.09 and from 34% to 41%, respectively. In the present work, the optimal flow rates of waste water and fresh water were 1.20 m3/h and 3.00 m3/h, respectively. The on-line cleaning device had an obvious effect on the heat transfer, by performing the device, heat transfer rate, heat transfer coefficient, effectiveness and exergy efficiency were improved by 6.11%, 9.49%, 7.19% and 7.93%, respectively.