Simulation of Water and Heat Recovery from Waste Industrial Gases by New Technology of Membrane Condenser Exchanger

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Abstract

A Number of Industries release large amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere through their stacks. The flue gas can be a potential source for obtaining the required water for those industries. Separation process of water vapor by means of membrane condenser exchanger was studied. Numerical simulation of the process was conducted by COMSOL software using computational fluid dynamics. Simulation was based on solving conservation equations for solute in the membrane condenser exchanger. The tube wall is made of a specially designed porous material that is capable to extract condensated liquid from the flue gas. The tubes capture, recover, and reuse sensible and latent waste heat, along with the water vapor from the exhaust or flue gas. The clean water can be returned to the system. The nanoporous ceramic membrane tubes capture water via capillary condensation, which occurs more readily within nanoporous ceramic pores rather than with typical steel finned tube economizers. Comparison of the model results with experimental data proved the validity of the model with a deviation of less than 6%. The achieved results indicated that 20% of water and energy could be recovered only by a temperature reduction less than 10 °C if the flue gas was in regular conditions (60 °C < T

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