TY - GEN
T1 - A numerical study on the energy performance of a novel furnace with acidic gas trap absorbers
AU - Zhang, Mingkan
AU - LaClair, Tim
AU - Wang, Lingshi
AU - Liu, Xiaobing
AU - Gao, Zhiming
AU - Momen, Ayyoub M.
AU - Gluesenkamp, Kyle
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 ASME
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Natural gas furnaces are widely used in US residential and commercial building markets. An important issue for natural gas furnaces is serious corrosion and fouling problems caused by acidic gas, such as SOx. An advanced adsorption technology based on acidic gas trap (AGT) absorbers offers the possibility to remove SOx acidic gas from natural gas furnaces with high efficiency and low cost, thereby enabling the development of condensing furnaces without the use of expensive corrosion resistant materials in the heat exchanger. A three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model has been developed to evaluate the heat transfer performance of a furnace with AGT absorbers and to compare it with a baseline conventional furnace without the AGT. Moreover, an axisymmetric model has been built focusing on the absorbing process in the AGT. The baseline conventional furnace used for the study is a commercial condensing furnace (Rheem 92% AFUE 84,000 BTU Multi-Position Gas Furnace). This furnace was completely disassembled, and the dimensions of each part were carefully measured and used to build a detailed CFD model. A model representing the new furnace, incorporating the AGT absorbers, was developed by adding the AGT system to the conventional furnace model. For the CFD analysis, a mixture model was employed to characterize the heat and mass transfer during the condensing process in the furnace while considering three components-air, water vapor and liquid water. Condensation takes place in the condensing heat exchanger, where water vapor changes phase to liquid water, and the latent heat is thus used in the furnace for useful heating. The simulation results characterize the energy performance of both the conventional furnace and the novel furnace with AGT absorbers, as well as the reactive processing in the AGT. These results provide insightful guidance for the development of the AGT absorber-based furnace from the perspective of its energy performance and will be used to further optimize this novel furnace design.
AB - Natural gas furnaces are widely used in US residential and commercial building markets. An important issue for natural gas furnaces is serious corrosion and fouling problems caused by acidic gas, such as SOx. An advanced adsorption technology based on acidic gas trap (AGT) absorbers offers the possibility to remove SOx acidic gas from natural gas furnaces with high efficiency and low cost, thereby enabling the development of condensing furnaces without the use of expensive corrosion resistant materials in the heat exchanger. A three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model has been developed to evaluate the heat transfer performance of a furnace with AGT absorbers and to compare it with a baseline conventional furnace without the AGT. Moreover, an axisymmetric model has been built focusing on the absorbing process in the AGT. The baseline conventional furnace used for the study is a commercial condensing furnace (Rheem 92% AFUE 84,000 BTU Multi-Position Gas Furnace). This furnace was completely disassembled, and the dimensions of each part were carefully measured and used to build a detailed CFD model. A model representing the new furnace, incorporating the AGT absorbers, was developed by adding the AGT system to the conventional furnace model. For the CFD analysis, a mixture model was employed to characterize the heat and mass transfer during the condensing process in the furnace while considering three components-air, water vapor and liquid water. Condensation takes place in the condensing heat exchanger, where water vapor changes phase to liquid water, and the latent heat is thus used in the furnace for useful heating. The simulation results characterize the energy performance of both the conventional furnace and the novel furnace with AGT absorbers, as well as the reactive processing in the AGT. These results provide insightful guidance for the development of the AGT absorber-based furnace from the perspective of its energy performance and will be used to further optimize this novel furnace design.
KW - Acidic gas trap
KW - Furnace
KW - Modeling
KW - Reactive modeling
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85092659361&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1115/HT2020-8952
DO - 10.1115/HT2020-8952
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85092659361
T3 - ASME 2020 Heat Transfer Summer Conference, HT 2020, collocated with the ASME 2020 Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting and the ASME 2020 18th International Conference on Nanochannels, Microchannels, and Minichannels
BT - ASME 2020 Heat Transfer Summer Conference, HT 2020, collocated with the ASME 2020 Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting and the ASME 2020 18th International Conference on Nanochannels, Microchannels, and Minichannels
PB - American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
T2 - ASME 2020 Heat Transfer Summer Conference, HT 2020, collocated with the ASME 2020 Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting and the ASME 2020 18th International Conference on Nanochannels, Microchannels, and Minichannels
Y2 - 13 July 2020 through 15 July 2020
ER -