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Energy Procedia 75 (2015) 3295 – 3300

The 7th International Conference on Applied Energy – ICAE2015

Parametric Analysis of Heat Recovery from Exhaust Gases of

Generators
Mahmoud Khaleda,b,*, Mohamad Ramadana, Hicham El Hagea
a
Energy and Thermo-Fluid group, School of Engineering, Lebanese International University LIU, PO Box 146404 Beirut, Lebanon
b
University Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Interdisciplinary Energy Research Institute (PIERI), Paris, France

Abstract

The present work considers parametric analyses that examine the attempts of capturing heat from the exhaust
gas of 500-kVA power generator. The heat capturing is performed through the use of counter flow concentric tube
heat exchanger. The captured heat is utilized to heat water. Therefore, various geometrical configurations of heat
exchangers are considered and supplied to heat transfer equations. Two flow-patterns are considered, flow-pattern I
where the exhaust gas is streamed in the inner tube while the water is flowing in the annulus, and flow-pattern II
where exhaust gas is streamed in the annulus while the water is flowing in the inner tube. The appropriate heat
transfer modeling is briefly presented. It was found that the most efficient geometrical configuration is found in flow-
pattern II, where water flows in the inner tube with an inner to outer diameter ratio of 0.75. The corresponding
captured average heat rate of the aforementioned case is 26 kW.
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICAE
Peer-review under responsibility of Applied Energy Innovation Institute

Keywords: Heat recovery, Generators, Water heating, Thermal modeling, Parametric analysis.

1. Introduction

The necessity to reduce fuel consumption while producing energy has escalated the efforts toward
developing renewable energy and energy management concepts [1-3]. Heat recovery is a particular route
in energy management where one tends to mainly capture heat generated from various applications,
contrary to solar and wind energies where natural energies are invested [3]. Consequently, heat recovery
or capturing heat has been receiving a special attention, namely, when it comes to heat water in without
suffering from high costs of using electricity, fuels, and solar energy. Depending on the system in which
hot fluids or gases are contained, heat recovery/capturing might take place from applications; such as,
internal combustion engines, heat pumps, chillers, chimneys, shower water and power generators [4-9].

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +00961-1-706881; fax: +00961-1-306044.

E-mail address: mahmoud.khaled@liu.edu.lb.

1876-6102 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of Applied Energy Innovation Institute
doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2015.07.710
3296 Mahmoud Khaled et al. / Energy Procedia 75 (2015) 3295 – 3300

Due to a continuous shortage in power supply, Lebanon is replete with residential and commercial
power generators. The present study considers the application of heat recovery/capturing concepts to
generators through different geometrical configurations of concentric tube heat exchangers. During the
cycle of operation of generators, acceptable magnitudes of power are released through the exhaust gas
which reaches temperatures higher than 300°C depending on applications [9-10]. In each case, the water
and exhaust inlet temperatures, the exhaust mass flow rate are fixed and the water outlet temperature is
calculated for various water mass flow rates covering application ranges for various diameters ratios.
This paper is organized such that the thermal modelling of performance calculations is exposed in
section 2 followed by results and analysis section 3. Finally, the main conclusions are drawn in section 4.

2. Thermal modeling

The heat exchanger considered in the present study is counter flow concentric tube heat exchanger with
inner diameter Di , outer diameter Do and length L . However in this section the modeling is only
presented for the case of gases flowing in the inner tube and water flowing in the annulus. Nevertheless
the calculations will include gases and water that might flow in either the inner tube or annulus so that
various geometrical configurations are tested. In any event, the same modeling technique applies but with
inversing the indices corresponding to the gases and the water. Neglecting the heat transfer between water
flowing in the annulus and the ambient air, the energy balance can be written as [11]:

m  g C p, g Tg ,in  Tg ,out  UA'Tln

 wC p,w Tw,out  Tw,in  m (1)

Where m w and m g are respectively the water and gases mass flow rates, C p ,w and C p , g are respectively
the water and gases specific heats, Tw,in and Tg ,in are respectively the water and gases inlet temperatures,
Tw,out and Tg ,out are respectively the water and gases outlet temperatures, U is the overall heat transfer
coefficient between the two fluids. A is the area of heat transfer between the two fluids, and 'Tlm is the
logarithmic mean temperature difference between the two fluids calculated from:

'Tlm
T g ,out  Tw,in   Tg ,in  Tw,out  (2)
ª Tg ,out  Tw,in º
ln « »
«¬ Tg ,in  Tw,out »¼

In most heat exchanger applications, a thin wall of large conductivity is generally used between the two
fluids and then the overall heat transfer coefficient and the heat transfer area can be calculated from:
1 (3)
U
1 1

hw hg
A SDi L (4)

Where hw and hg are the convective heat transfer coefficients of streamed water and gas respectively.
These coefficients depend on the nature of the flow (laminar or turbulent) and the geometry in which the
fluid is flowing and can be calculated using the heat transfer correlations found in [11]. To facilitate the
 Mahmoud Khaled et al. / Energy Procedia 75 (2015) 3295 – 3300 3297

calculation of the heat transfer rate that can be recovered from the exhaust gas, one of the outlet
temperatures should be calculated. Hence, Equations (1) to (4) are rearranged so that one equation with
one single unknown, the water outlet temperature Tw,out , is obtained:
§ m C · (5)
¨ Tg ,in  w p ,w Tw,out  Tw,in   Tw,in ¸  Tg ,in  Tw,out 
¨ m g C p , g ¸
m w C p ,w Tw,out  Tw,in  UA © ¹
ª§ m w C p , w ·º
« ¨¨ Tg ,in  Tw,out  Tw,in   Tw,in ¸ »
¸»
« m g C p , g
ln « © ¹
«
Tg ,in  Tw,out  »
»
« »
¬ ¼
Equation (5) is solved by iteration to find the water outlet temperature Tw,out for given flow rates, inlet
temperatures and specific heats of water and gas. Afterward, the heat rate recovered from the exhaust gas
can be determined as:

Pexchanger m wC p,w Tw,out  Tw,in  (6)

3. Results and Analysis

The thermal modeling presented in the previous section is applied to monitor the performance of the
heat exchanger of the system when the geometrical configurations of the exchanger are varied. For
analysis purposes a one-meter length counter-flow concentric tube heat exchanger is utilized to heat water
by the exhaust gas. The water inlet temperature is fixed at 20 °C. The exhaust gas flow rate is equal to
0.76 kg/s. Additionally, the temperature intensity of gas, for 500-kVA generator, is equal to 550 °C [12]
and considered to be the temperature at the inlet of the heat exchanger. Finally, three geometrical
configurations are considered for each flow-pattren; hence, there are six geometrical configurations in
total. For flow pattern I, three outlet to inlet diameter ratios of 1.25, 1.5, and 1.75 are considered. For flow
pattern II, three inlet to outlet diameter ratios of 0.25, 0.50, and 0.75 are considered. For configurations of
flow pattern I, the inner diameter is equal to 0.10 m. For configurations of flow pattern II, the outer
diameter is equal to 0.10 m. The three geometrical configurations of flow-pattern I is being investigated
by incrementing the water flow rate from 0.02 to 0.5 kg/s with a step of 0.02 kg/s. Consequently, Figure
1-a and Figure 1-b portray respectively the variation of the water outlet temperature and the heat rate with
respect to the water flow rate.
180,0 35,0
Outlet temperature (°C)

160,0
30,0 Out. Dia / In. Dia. = 1.25
140,0 Out. Dia. / In. Dia. = 1.50
Heat rate (kW)

Out. Dia. / In. Dia. = 1.25 25,0 Out. Dia. / In. Dia. = 1.75
120,0
Out. Dia. / In. Dia. = 1.50
100,0 Out. Dia. / In. Dia. = 1.75 20,0

80,0 15,0
60,0
10,0
40,0
5,0
20,0

0,0 0,0
0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5
Water flow rate (kg/s) Water flow rate (kg/s)
(a) (b)

Fig. 1. (a) Variation of the water outlet temperature; (b) variation of the waste heat recovered in function of the water mass flow
rate for different configurations
3298 Mahmoud Khaled et al. / Energy Procedia 75 (2015) 3295 – 3300

Figure 1-a, demonstrates clearly that the water outlet temperature decreases exponentially with the
water flow rate and decreases as the outer diameter increases for a fixed inner diameter. As an illustration
for an outer to inner diameter ratio of 1.25, by increasing the water flow rate from 0.02 to 0.5 kg/s the
water outlet temperature decreases from 167 °C to 35 °C. For outer/inner diameter ratios of 1.5 and 1.75,
the water outlet temperature decreases from 111 to 30 °C and from 85 to 23 °C respectively. However, at
a temperature greater than 100 °C the liquid phase of water changes to vapor, therefore, evaporation will
take place prior to reaching of the exchanger. Values of vapor temperature will be kept in the calculations
to quantify the magnitude of wasted heat that can be recovered.
From Figure 1-b, it can be shown that for an outer/inner diameter ratio of 1.75 the heat rate (5.5
kW) is almost invariant. For the diameter ratios of 1.25 and 1.5, sudden increase in the heat rate takes
place at a specific water flow rate. As illustration for an outer/inner diameter ratio of 1.25, the heat rate is
almost constant around 13.5 kW up to a water flow rate of 0.36 kg/s at which it increases suddenly to 27.9
kW and continue its increase exponentially. The same trend is noted for the diameters ratio of 1.5 but
with different magnitudes and transition for a water flow rate of 0.4 kg/s. The sudden increase in heat
rates, which occur at constant water flow rate, are due to the transition from laminar to turbulent regimes
that take place due to variation of geometrical configurations. To illustrate, Figure 2 shows the variation
of the Reynolds number of water in terms of the water flow rate for the three configurations tested above.
3500
Out. Dia. / In. Dia. = 1.25 Out. Dia. / In. Dia. = 1.5
3000 Out. Dia. / In. Dia. = 1.75 Limit transition
Reynolds number

2500

2000

1500

1000

500

0
0,02 0,12 0,22 0,32 0,42
Water flow rate (kg/s)
Fig. 2. Variation of the Water Reynolds number in terms of the water flow rate for the first three configurations tested

As seen, the transition to turbulent regime takes place at a Reynolds number of 2300. It is found
that by varying the water flow rate from 0.02 to 0.5 kg/s for an outer/inner diameter ratio of 1.75, the flow
remains laminar with the Reynolds number varying from 182 to 2271. For an outer/inner diameter ratio of
1.5, the Reynolds number varies from 233 to 2808, however, a Reynolds number of 2300 is reached
around 0.4 kg/s of water flow rate. For an outer/inner diameter ratio of 1.25, the Reynolds number
increases from 380 to 3485; however, 2300 Reynolds number is reached at water around flow rate of 0.36
kg/s. It should be recognized that the inner Reynolds number of gas equals 256640 and is invariant with
respect to the three geometrical configurations and with the water flow rate. This high Reynolds number
induces high convective coefficient of the gas flow.
For the three geometrical configurations, prior to turbulence transition as the water flow rate
increases the water convective coefficient increases negligibly compared to the gas convective
coefficient, hence, resulting in a negligible effect on the overall heat transfer coefficient of equation (3)
and subsequently on the heat rate. For the outer/inner diameter ratios of 1.25 and 1.5, when transition
takes place, the water convective coefficient increases to a bound that becomes no longer negligible
compared to the gas convective coefficient. This increase in the water convective coefficient provokes an
increase in the overall heat transfer coefficient and subsequently in the heat rate.
Based upon the aforementioned observations, it is recommended to lay the outer diameter in close
vicinity to inner diameter so that the heat rate is enhanced. Furthermore, by decreasing the outer diameter
 Mahmoud Khaled et al. / Energy Procedia 75 (2015) 3295 – 3300 3299

for a fixed inner diameter, one is accelerating the transition from laminar to turbulent flow, therefore
enhancing the heat transfer rate for the same quantity of streamed water. Moreover, for each geometrical
configuration, the mass flow rate corresponding to the transition bound should be preliminary calculated
and beyond bound mass flow rates are recommended.
Carrying on, the three geometrical configurations of flow-pattern II is being investigated by
incrementing the water flow rate from 0.02 to 0.5 kg/s with a step of 0.02 kg/s. Figure 3-a and Figure 3-b
illustrate respectively the variation of the water outlet temperature and heat rate (Power) as a function of
the water flow rate.
120,0 45,0
In. Dia / Out. Dia. = 0.25
Outlet temperature (°C)

40,0
100,0 In. Dia. / Out. Dia. = 0.50
In. Dia. / Out. Dia. = 0.25 35,0 In. Dia. / Out. Dia. = 0.75
In. Dia. / Out. Dia. = 0.50

Heat rate (kW)

80,0 In. Dia. / Out. Dia. = 0.75 30,0

25,0
60,0
20,0

40,0 15,0

10,0
20,0
5,0

0,0 0,0
0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5
Water flow rate (kg/s) Water flow rate (kg/s)
(a) (b)

Fig. 3. (a) Variation of the water outlet temperature; (b) variation of the waste heat recovered as function of the water mass flow
rate for the three last configurations

From Figure 3-a, it can be shown that the water outlet temperature decreases exponentially with
the water flow rate and increases upon enlarging the inner diameter for a fixed outer diameter. As an
illustration for an inner/outer diameter ratio of 0.25, by increasing the water flow rate from 0.02 to 0.5
kg/s the water outlet temperature decreases from 82 °C to 26 °C. For inner/outer diameter ratios of 0.5
and 0.75, the water outlet temperature decreases from 101 to 33 °C and from 112 to 40 °C respectively. In
contrary to flow-pattern I where the water is streamed into the annulus, Figure 3-b shows that the heat rate
is increasing exponentially with the water flow rate. As illustration for an inner/outer diameter ratio of
0.25, the heat rate increases from 5.3 to 13 kW. However, it is recognized that the increase in the heat rate
is escalated as the inner diameter increases, for instance, the heat rate increases from 6.8 to 26.3 kW for
an inner/outer ratio of 0.5 and from 7.7 to 41.2 kW for an inner/outer ration of 0.75.
Comparing with the three geometrical configurations of flow-pattern I, it can be seen that the
transition from laminar flow to turbulent flow in the three geometrical configurations of flow-pattern II
takes place at lesser water flow rate. This is contributed to the decrease in the inner diameter. This causes
the heat rate sudden changes to occur at lesser flow rates than in the case of Figure 1-b of flow pattern I.
Finally, if one considers the six configurations at the same time and calculates the average heat
transfer rate, it can be found that geometric configurations of flow-pattern II, namely, the inlet-to-outlet
diameter ratios of 0.50 and 0.75 (for which the heat rates are respectively 20.2 and 26.2 kW) are more
promising than the geometric configurations of flow-pattern I, namely, the outlet-to-inlet ratios of 1.25
and 1.5 (for which the heat rates are respectively 18.1 and 10.2 kW).

4. Conclusions

The present work considers parametric analyses that capture heat from the exhaust of a 500-kVA
power generator. The heat is captured through the use of counter flow concentric tube heat exchanger.
Two flow-patterns are considered, flow-pattern I in which the exhaust gas flows in the inner tube and
3300 Mahmoud Khaled et al. / Energy Procedia 75 (2015) 3295 – 3300

water in the annulus, whereas for flow-pattern II, water flows in the inner tube and gas flows in the
annulus. Each of the aforementioned flow-patterns considered three different geometric configurations in
which the diameters ratios are varied. It was concluded that water can be heated up to a temperature 100
°C depending on the mass flow rate. Geometrical configurations employed in flow-pattern II show
superior heat rates to those obtained from the geometric configurations employed in flow-pattern II. For
flow-pattern I it is recommended to position the outer diameter in a close vicinity of the constant inner
diameter. However, for flow-pattern II, it is recommended to locate the inner diameter in a close vicinity
of the constant outer diameter. In both cases, design tolerances and specifications should be checked.

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Biography
PhD and Master in Energy and Thermo-fluid and Engineering diploma in Mechanical
Engineering. Worked in the Research and Development Entity of PSA Peugeot Citroen and
Thermo-Kinetic Laboratory LTN of Nantes - France for three years. Assistant Professor at
the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Lebanese International University since
2010.