Heat and mass transfer calculation for carbon capture pilot plant Assignment

Heat and mass transfer calculation for carbon capture pilot plant - Assignment Example The calculations show that with increase in the flow rate of both streams the temperature drop of the hot stream increased steadily. On the other hand, the temperature rise of the cold stream decreased substantially. The clear jacket allowed the observation that the jacket was continuously full at all times and because neither stream had any color, it was not possible to notice whether the turbulence of the two streams changed at all. In future experiments it might be a good idea to introduce a small stream of dye into both streams to observe turbulence. However, this would lead to a change in the mass flow rate and more importantly in the specific heat capacity, which would have to be accounted for in subsequent calculations. Important findings of this experiment are that the thermal efficiency of the plate and frame heat exchanger is better than that of the concentric tube heat exchanger and secondly, with the increase in flow rate the efficiency improved only marginally. This is perhaps because with the multiple pass arrangement where the two streams changed direction frequently an element of turbulence was already present that did not change much with the change in flow rates. However, the observations taken are too few to arrive at this conclusion with confidence. Important findings of this experiment are that the thermal efficiency of the plate and frame heat exchanger is comparable to that of the concentric tube heat exchanger but lower than that of the plate and frame heat exchanger. Secondly, with the increase in flow rate of the cold stream the efficiency improved marginally. In this case again, the conclusion can be that the design allows for introducing greater turbulence in the shell-side stream through the baffles