FIRE TUBE BOILER ENERGY EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS WITH TURBULATORS

https://doi.org/10.23670/rc.2024.01.03

Abstract

This work analyzes the energy efficiency of a fire tube boiler with turbulators, which is installed in the Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Laboratory of the Universidad Mayor de San Simón. For this purpose, a numerical model was developed to simulate the heat transfer in the boiler, which was validated with experimental data operating in steady state. Through the mesh test of the boiler model, it was shown that the appropriate number of divisions is 300 control volumes, each 0.004 [m] long, coefficient of tubes inserted with turbulators, it was determined that the Petukhov (1970) correlation is adequately adapted to the turbulator geometry used. It was observed because the temperatures at the end of each boiler step are stabilized for this amount. From the correlations found in the literature that allow determining the convection that heat transfer from the flue gas increases with the use of turbulators. Thus, the efficiency of the boiler operating with turbulators reaches a value of 75,36 %, increasing by 29,72 % with respect to the efficiency obtained without turbulators.