In recent years, many power plants have begun researching heat pipes as a type of heat exchanger and have gradually applied them to air preheaters, resulting in the development of heat pipe air preheaters.
Here are some features and advantages of heat pipe air preheaters.
1. High Reliability and Safety
The heat pipe preheater can completely separate the flue gas and air using the preheater’s partition plate. If a single heat pipe is damaged due to wear, corrosion, overheating, or other reasons, it generally does not affect the overall operation of the preheater. This makes the heat pipe preheater highly reliable when used with flammable, explosive, and highly corrosive flue gases.
2. Counterflow Heat Exchange and Economy
In a heat pipe preheater, the flue gas and air flow completely separately, making it relatively easy to achieve counterflow heat exchange. Both the hot and cold gas streams flow outside the pipes. Since the heat transfer coefficient for external flow is much higher than for internal flow, it is very economical for heat recovery applications with lower flue gas temperatures.
3. Anti-Wear and Anti-Clogging Design
For flue gas with a high dust content, the heat pipe preheater can resolve wear and ash blockage issues by modifying the structure and expanding the heating surface.
4. Anti-Corrosion Design
When a heat pipe preheater is used for heat recovery from corrosive flue gas, the wall temperature of the heat pipe can be adjusted by modifying the heat transfer area of the evaporation and condensation sections. This allows the heat pipe to avoid the most corrosive regions as much as possible.
5. Easy Maintenance and Replacement
The heat pipe air preheater is easy to disassemble, inspect, and replace. It consists of numerous independent heat exchange elements—heat pipes—arranged in a specific pattern. Therefore, replacing some of the heat pipes will not impact the overall normal operation of the heat pipe air preheater.
6. Simple Structure and Efficient Heat Transfer
The heat pipe heat exchanger has a simple structure and high heat transfer efficiency. When transferring the same amount of heat, it consumes less metal and occupies less space than other types of heat exchangers. Additionally, the pressure loss experienced by the heat transfer fluid passing through the heat exchanger is lower, leading to reduced power consumption.
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