Experimental Heat Transfer Coefficients of Waste Heat Recovery Unit in Detergent Manufacturing Process

The waste heat recovery unit is one of the most important units in the chemical process. It recovers waste heat from the exhaust gas of the process resulting in the reduction of heat loss. In the detergent manufacturing process, the particulate air leaving the spray dryer is the exhaust gas containing the large amount of heat. Therefore, a waste heat recovery unit can significantly reduce heat loss. In this work, heat transfer coefficients of a waste heat recovery unit in the detergent manufacturing process were studied. Waste heat from the particulate air is recovered in the shell and coiled tube heat exchanger. The particulate air flows in the shell side, and water flows in the tube side. Four coiled tubes with different coil pitches were investigated. The results show that the tube-side heat transfer coefficient increases as the coil pitch decreases. Loading ratio also has an important effect on heat transfer coefficients. The increase of loading ratio leads to a lower value of the overall heat transfer coefficient. From 100 experiments, empirical correlations for the prediction of tube-side and shell-side heat transfer coefficients were proposed. The results indicate that the predicted heat transfer coefficients agree well with the experimental values.