Hollins, S.J. (1981) Development of an apparatus to investigate the thermal characteristics of regenerative heat exchangers. PhD thesis, University of Leeds.
Abstract
Cyclic thermal regenerators have an important industrial application, however most of the design techniques are old and use many simplifying assumptions. With the advent of digital computers many of these simplifying assumptions can be examined, however there is very little scope for practical verification. An apparatus has been designed, built and fully commissioned to investigate thermal regenerator characteristics. The analog operation of the apparatus is enhanced by four computer aspects. Commissioning of the regenerator highlighted how the response of apparatus can be influenced by the peripheral pipework around the test section, radiation effects from the heaters and jetting of air into the regenerator packed bed section. A series of experiments, comprising runs (a maximum of ten period changes) within a set-up (a known air flowrate and packed bed length) were formulated to examine the regenerator response, using three types of spherical packing, steel lead glass and alumina. A method of obtaining convective heat transfer coefficients was produced and represented in two forms. One in a graphical form which can be used for cyclic regenerator designs without the prior knowledge of a heat transfer coefficient, whilst the other form is data stored on a computer disc which produces convective heat transfer coefficients for regenerator raw data. Analysis of the practical data clearly shows the importance of the number of cycles required to reach equilibrium, test bed heat leak and packing intraconduction. Finally, prior to each cyclic set-up a single shot run was performed and the convective heat transfer coefficient obtained using Darabi's(1981) graphical technique. This offered a unique opportunity to compare cylic and single shot characteristics for the same physical system.
Metadata
Supervisors: | Heggs, P.J. |
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Awarding institution: | University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering (Leeds) > School of Chemical and Process Engineering (Leeds) |
Identification Number/EthosID: | uk.bl.ethos.589140 |
Depositing User: | Digitisation Studio Leeds |
Date Deposited: | 07 Jan 2014 15:49 |
Last Modified: | 07 Mar 2014 11:47 |
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