Heat Loss Calculator for

a Stainless Steel
Complex Pipe System
By: Thomas Morris
& Jacob Hannon

The Problem Background

We work at a Research and Development company
that designs various hot fluid systems.
Systems are on machines that are subject to wind and
cold weather.
The systems have heat exchangers with known
temperature inputs, and then long complex
arrangements of stainless steel pipe to deliver the hot
water.
Each prototype is costly to build and test.
We need a way of estimating the temperature and
pressure loss in a system before building a prototype.

Objective
Determine the final temperature and
pressure loss.
Determine if the losses are significant if
the wind is blowing and for different
outside temperatures.

Setup of Heat Transfer Problem

Partial Continuation 1

Partial Continuation 2

Initial Conditions

Excel Spread Sheet Solution

All calculations including property
interpolations are self contained
Perform iterations without switching
between a property tables calculator
Could easily be adaptable for other fluids
than water or other pipe materials.

Excel Spread Sheet

Link

Summary of results pertaining to

initial conditions
Only required one
iteration to decrease
error
Change in temperature
lower than expected
Pressure loss seems
appropriate
Internal flow was
turbulent
Changing wind speed
had little effect
Radiation had a small
to negligible effect

Conclusions

Small temperature change due to these factors

Large internal heat transfer coefficient (116449.3 W/m^2*K) is 1047.4 times bigger than the small
external heat transfer coefficient (111.179 W/m^2*K)
Small diameter pipe (13.7 mm)=small surface area thus the heat rate between the pipe and the air
was very small
The pipe actually stored most of the energy. During an experiment the pipe changed color validating
this result.

Changing Wind Speed only changed output temperature a few degrees because the
external heat transfer coefficient did not change enough to have significant effect.
The Pressure Drop seemed appropriate for the length, diameter, and relative roughness.
Experiment was performed using very cold outside temperatures and a high temperature
loss was expected. The results do not support this hypothesis and in fact show that on a
hot day the losses could be even smaller/negligable.
We anticipated the need to insulate the pipe but according to the results this is not
necessary.
Under 140 mph hurricane winds there was only a 11.8 degree change (Due again to
previously stated conlusions)
Significantly increasing the length adds surface area and can make a huge difference in
the temperature loss. For example with a 105.4 m pipe the delta T was 76.6 degrees.
A lot of factors not investigated here can also affect the result (ie mass flow rate, pipe
diameter, thickness, etc.) and using this spreadsheet will help determine the optimal
configuration for any future fluid system.

Appendix
Property tables were entered into the
spreadsheet from Fundamentals of Heat
and Mass Transfer 6th edition by
Incropera, Dewitt, Bergmann, and Lavine
Copywright 2007 John Wiley and Sons
Equations used also from the same
source