ABSTRACT
Waste heat recovery is an important criterion that helps the industries to optimize their overall production process. Since steel production activities consume a large amount of energy and the flue gases generated are exhausted out through a stack chimney, the heat energy associated with flue gases can be significantly recovered to preheat the combustion air using a recuperator. The recuperator under consideration in the present chapter is operational at Continuous Strip Production Mill of ArcelorMittal/Nippon Steel India Ltd. at Hazira, Surat, India. In an attempt to maximize the waste heat recovery, the current work deals with the optimization of geometric and operational parameters to reduce the overallpressure drop of the combustion air and improve the effectiveness of the recuperator. To take into account the effects of curvature of tubes, a 3D model of the recuperator is further simulated in ANSYS Fluent. Finally, a comparative analysis is done for three different recuperator configurations. The final results are presented in the form of optimum ranges and values of geometric and flow parameters indicating that a recuperator with curved tubes configuration offers maximum waste heat recovery. An optimum tube diameter of 38.67 mm is suggested for the present recuperator configuration.
