Heat transfer characteristics of an external tube heat exchanger in a 1296t/h circulating fluidized bed boiler

Abstract

In this research article, experimental study was carried out to obtain the heat transfer characteristics between a submerged horizontal tube bundle and a fluidized bed in a large-scale circulating fluidized bed (CFB) boiler with an external heat exchanger (EHE). The operational parameters in the tube EHE were measured during performance tests at variable load conditions. The average heat transfer coefficient (HTC) was calculated using a mechanistic heat transfer model based on packed renewal theory. The heat transfer characteristics are considered in terms of heat transfer mechanisms such as emulsion phase convection, gas convection and also thermal radiation. The obtained heat transfer data exhibit a maximum value with variation mean bed particle size irrespective of pressure. The results showed that the average HTC increases with a decrease of the Sauter mean particle diameter and with the increase of the fluidizing number as a result of good mixing dynamics in emulsion phase (i.e. emulsion wall contact time, bubble fraction in the bed). Based on the heat transfer data, empirical correlations are proposed for predicting a heat transfer coefficient from fluidized bed to horizontal tube bundle. The mechanistic heat transfer model predicted the average HTC in sufficiently good agreement with CFB boiler data accessible in the literature.