Experimental study of condensation heat-transfer and water-recovery process in a micro-porous ceramic membrane tube bundle

Micro-porous ceramic membrane tube is a new type of condensation material which can synchronously recover both water vapor and its accompanied latent heat from exhausted flue gas. The recovery outcome is helpful to reduce amount of make-up water and enhance boiler efficiency of thermal power plant. In this study, an experiment has been carried out to investigate condensation heat-transfer, water-recovery, and flow-resistance performance of micro-porous ceramic membrane tube bundle (CMTB), respectively. In addition, real exhausted flue gas with inlet flow rate ranging from 390 to 750 m3/h, temperature ranging from 323 K to 373 K was used as experimental feed gas. Results showed that the condensation heat-transfer process got more apparently with increasing of flue gas inlet temperature (from 335.3 K to 364.8 K). In addition, both cooling water flow rate and heat-transfer temperature difference had a remarkable influence on the water-recovery performance of the CMTB, and maximal water-recovery mass flow rate could reach 0.0336 × 103 kg/h. Most of all, velocity drop of flue gas was controlled within an appropriate range (from 28.94 m3/h to 178.78 m3/h). The application analysis on the CMTB gives a good perspective for designing high efficiency membrane-type condenser to recover water vapor from exhausted flue gas and make good use of its latent heat in the thermodynamic system of power plant.