Study of thermal performance and optimization of city gas station heaters equipped with turbulator in the fire tube section

Considering the necessity of managing energy consumption and reducing pollutants, the study of effective solutions and techniques in this context is of interest to researchers. The low efficiency of this system causes the release of high volumes of greenhouse gases and gas consumption. Therefore, due to the large number of them in the gas industry, providing a solution to increase the efficiency of this equipment and adapt to the limitations of the above stations from an environmental perspective and energy consumption management is very important. Due to the geometry, burner type, and temperature conditions, using the border layer stimulation method in the fire tube is one of the suitable methods to increase heat transfer. Therefore, the present work investigates using a disc turbulator with different angular cutting in fire tubes to improve the thermal, energy, and environmental performance of the above heating system. Numerical simulation is performed in three dimensions using AnsysFluent software. The results show that the burner with a capacity of 150,000 kcal/h of a complete disc turbulator, increases the efficiency up to two times. However, for the maximum capacity of the burner, it causes high emissions of CO and unburned hydrocarbons. By inserting a 315-degree disc turbulator and reducing the gas path blockage to 56 % at maximum burner capacity without increasing CO and CH4, the efficiency increases to 80 %. Using the proposed method and without a high cost, the heater efficiency can increase by up to 88 % and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 48 %.

Automated summary

Considering the importance of managing energy consumption and reducing pollutants, researchers are interested in studying effective solutions and techniques in this area. The low efficiency of the system leads to the release of large amounts of greenhouse gases and gas consumption. Therefore, finding a solution to improve equipment efficiency and address environmental and energy consumption limitations is crucial. The use of a disc turbulator in fire tubes is investigated in this study to enhance the thermal, energy, and environmental performance of the heating system.