Heat and Mass Transfer Correlations for Staggered Nanoporous Membrane Tubes in Flue Gas Crossflow

The use of transport membrane condenser (TMC) technology to recover heat and mass from the flue gas has been increasing recently. The heat and mass transfer from the TMC tube bundle have been studied experimentally and numerically, and several numerical models have been proposed. Although many heat transfer and pressure drop correlations are available for single-phase flows over tube bundles of solid walls, to the best of our knowledge, there is a lack of heat and mass transfer and pressure drop correlations for the porous membrane tubes with condensing flue gas that cover a wide range of parameters. In this study, the heat transfer, mass transfer, and pressure drop imposed by the crossflow ceramic nanoporous tubes in TMC have been studied numerically within wide ranges of tube diameters (4.57-7.62 mm), number of rows (2-24 rows), and Reynolds number (170-8900), under flue gas condensation. The turbulent flow of the flue gas mixture was modeled by the shear stress transport SST k - omega turbulence model. A hybrid/mixed condensation model written in user defined functions was employed to calculate the water vapor condensation rate. Numerical results with condensing flue gas are compared to available correlations for single-phase Nusselt number and pressure drops in the literature. It was found that except for selected conditions, the single-phase correlations noticeably differed from the TMC numerical results. Empirical TMC correlations for heat transfer and pressure drops with respect to condensation rate, number of rows, and the nanoporous membrane geometrical properties were derived thereby. The derived correlations for TMC show a good agreement with numerical data for all investigated parameters and can predict the 96% of the convective Nusselt number, overall Nusselt number, and friction factor inside the TMC within +/- 10%, +/- 10%, and +/- 15%, respectively. The effects of key parameters on the heat transfer, mass transfer, and pressure drops are illustrated and discussed in detail.

Automated summary

This study numerically investigates the heat transfer, mass transfer, and pressure drops in transport membrane condenser (TMC) using crossflow ceramic nanoporous tubes. Empirical correlations for heat transfer and pressure drops are derived and show good agreement with numerical results.