Maharashtra State Board of Technical Education

Latthe Education Society’s Polytechnic, Sangli

Micro Project
Academic Year 2022 - 2023

Title of the Micro Project:-

Write a report on waste heat recovery in process industry

Program:-
Mechanical Engineering
Program Code:-
ME-6-I
Course:-
Emerging trends in mechanical engineering
Course Code:-
22652
 Maharashtra State Board of Technical Education
Certificate
This is to certify that,
The following students of sixth Semester of Diploma in
Mechanical Engineering of institute L. E. S. Polytechnic, Sangli
(0043).Have completed the Micro Project satisfactorily in subject:
-emerging trends in mechanical engineering (22652) for the
Academic year 2022- 2023 as prescribed in the curriculum.

Sr. Roll no Enrollment Student name

No. No.
1 223621 2000430101 Viahal patil
2 223622 2000430091 Atharv salunkhe
3 223623 2000430066 Mahesh shinde
4 223624 2000430075 Suhas shinde

Subject Teacher. Head of Department. Principal.

(Signature) (Signature) (Signature)
 Gratitude

The success and final outcome of this project

required a lot of guidance from many people and I am
extremely privileged to have got this all along the
completion of my project. All that I have done is only
due to supervision I would not forget thank them.
A sense of triumph is very much justified at
the stage of completion of my project. It is pleasure to
utilize this opportunity of acknowledgement all those
people who have helped me to complete my project.
I have great pleasure to express my deep
sense of indebtedness and heart full of gratitude to Prof.
A. B. Gaji, principal of L. E. S. Polytechnic College,
Kupwad. I am highly great full to Prof. S. J. Patil. for
giving their valuable time to guide us. I am indebted to
our Prof. P. B. Patil for their faithful discussion, valuable
guidance and help by him during the project work.
 Introduction
Industrial waste heat is the energy that is generated in industrial
processes which is not put into any practical use and is lost,
wasted and dumped into the environment. Recovering the
waste heat can be conducted through various waste heat
recovery technologies to provide valuable energy sources and
reduce the overall energy consumption. In this paper, a
comprehensive review is made of waste heat recovery
methodologies and state of the art technologies used for
industrial processes. By considering the heat recovery
opportunities for energy optimisation in the steel and iron, food,
and ceramic industries, a revision of the current practices and
proce- dures is assessed. The research is conducted on the
operation and performance of the commonly used tech-
nologies such as recuperators, regenerators, including furnace
regenerators and rotary regenerators or heat wheels, passive air
preheaters, regenerative and recuperative burners, plate heat
exchangers and economisers and units such as waste heat
boilers and run around coil (RAC). Techniques are considered
such as direct contact condensation recovery, indirect contact
condensation recovery, transport membrane condensation and
the use of units such as heat pumps, heat recovery steam
generators (HRSGs), heat pipe systems, Organic Rankine
cycles, including the Kalina cycle, that recover and exchange
waste heat with potential energy content. Furthermore, the uses
of new emerging technologies for direct heat to power
conversion such as thermoelectric, piezoelectric, thermionic,
and thermo photo voltaic (TPV) power generation techniques
are also explored and reviewed. In this regard, the functionality
of all technologies and usage of each technique with respect to
their advantages and disadvantages is evaluated and described.
With the growing trend of increases in fuel prices
over the past decades as well the rising concern regarding
global warming, engineering industries are challenged with the
task of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving the
efficiency of their sites. In this regard, the use of waste heat
recovery systems in industrial processes has been key as one of
the major areas of research to reduce fuel consumption, lower
harmful emissions and improve production efficiency.
Industrial waste heat is the energy that is generated in industrial
processes which is not put into any practical use and is wasted
or dumped into the environment. Sources of waste heat mostly
include heat loss transferred through conduction, convection
and radiation from industrial products, equipment and
processes and heat discharged from combustion processes [1].
Heat loss can be classified into high temperature, medium
temperature and low temperature grades. Waste Heat Recovery
(WHR) systems are introduced for each range of waste heat to
allow the most optimum efficiency of waste heat recovery to be
obtained. High temperature WHR consists of recovering waste
heat at temperatures greater than 400 °C, the medium
temperature range is 100–400 °C and the low temperature range
is for temperatures less than 100 °C . Usually most of the waste
heat in the high temperature range comes from direct
combustion processes, in the medium range from the exhaust
of combustion units and in the low temperature range from
parts, products and the equipment of process units . It is
estimated that the UK industrial sector consumes as much as
17% of the overall UK economy’s energy consumption and
generates about 32% of the UK’s heat-related CO2 emissions.
From this value and as can be seen from Fig. 1, 72% of the UK
industrial demand is from industrial thermal processes of which
31% is classified as low temperature process heat and almost
20% of that or 40 TWh/yr is estimated to have potential for
industrial waste heat recovery . It is found that the most energy
consuming industries in the UK are cement, ceramic, iron and
steel, refineries, glassmaking, chemicals, paper and pulp and
food and drink. These industries together contribute about £50
bn/yr to the UK’s economy . This indicates that improving
energy efficiency through waste heat recovery models can help
UK businesses to reduce the operating costs of their businesses,
improve the energy efficiency of their sites and reduce the UK’s
industrial CO2 emissions
 Waste heat recovery systems

Waste heat recovery methods include capturing and

transferring the waste heat from a process with a gas or liquid
back to the system as an extra energy source . The energy
source can be used to create additional heat or to generate
electrical and mechanical power
Waste heat can be rejected at any temperature;
conventionally, the higher the temperature, the higher the
quality of the waste heat and the easier optimisation of the
waste heat recovery process. It is therefore important to
discover the maximum amount of recoverable heat of the
highest potential from a process and to ensure the achievement
of the maximum efficiency from a waste heat recovery system
The quantity or the amount of available waste
heat can be calculated using the equation shown below.
Q = VρC T P Δ
where, Q (J) is the heat content, V is the flowrate of the
substance (m3 / s), ρ is density of the flue gas (kg/m3 ), Cp is
the specific heat of the substance (J/kg.K) and ΔT is the
difference in substance temperature (K) between the final
highest temperature in the outlet (Tout) and the initial
temperature in the inlet (Tin) of system. Depending on the type
and source of waste heat and in order to justify which waste
heat recovery system can be used, it is essential to investigate
the amount and grade of heat recoverable from the process.
There are many different heat recovery technologies available
which are used for capturing and recovering the waste heat and
they mainly consist of energy recovery heat exchangers in the
form of a waste heat recovery unit.
These units mainly comprise common waste heat
recovery systems such as air preheaters including recuperators,
regenerators, including furnace regenerators and rotary
regenerators or heat wheels and run around coil, regenerative
and recuperative burners, heat pipe heat exchangers, plate heat
exchangers, economisers, waste heat boilers and direct
electrical conversion devices. These units all work by the same
principle to capture, recover and exchange heat with a potential
energy content in a process.
 Regenerative and recuperative burners

Regenerative and recuperative burners optimise energy

efficiency by incorporating heat exchanger surfaces to capture
and use the waste heat from the hot flue gas from the
combustion process . Typically, regenerative devices consist of
two burners with separate control valves, which are connected
to the furnace and alternately heat the combustion air entering
the furnace. The system works by guiding the exhaust gases
from the furnace into a case which contains refractory material
such as aluminium oxide . The exhaust gas heats up the
aluminium oxide media and the heat energy from the exhaust
is recovered and stored. When the media is fully heated, the
direction of the flue gas is reversed, with the stored heat being
transferred to the inlet air entering the burner and the burner
with hot media starts firing. Combustion air from the hot media
then heats up the cooler media and the process starts again.
Through this technique, the regenerative burner can save the
fuel needed to heat the air and this improves the efficiency of
combustion (see Fig. 2). Burners that incorporate recuperative
systems are also used commercially. A recuperative burner has
heat exchanger surfaces as part of the burner design, which
capture energy from the heated gas that passes through the body
of the burner . The burner uses the energy of waste gas from the
exhaust to preheat the combustion air before it gets mixed with
the fuel. The burners consist of an internal heat exchanger with
various features such as grooves, counter current flow and fins,
which are used to establish thermal contact between the waste
exhaust gases and the combustion air coming from the supply
pipe ]. The design works by collecting the both the exhaust gas
and waste heat from the body of the burner nozzle, and using
them both to transfer heat into the combustion air. This air
preheating results in an improved efficiency of combustion and
thus more heat from the nozzle. It should be noted that the
burner and the nozzle are inserted into the furnace body and the
waste heat is transferred to the burner by convection from the
exhaust gases. Osaka Gas [14] demonstrates that for a furnace
with a temperature of 1000 °C the air can be preheated to at
least 500 °C, indicating a considerable improvement of thermal
efficiency
 Economisers
Economisers or finned tube heat exchangers that
recover low – medium waste heat are mainly used for heating
liquids. The system consists of tubes that is covered by metallic
fins to maximise the surface area of heat absorption and the heat
transfer rate .The system is located in the duct carrying the
exiting exhaust gases and it absorbs the waste heat by letting
the hot gases pass through different sections covered by the
finned tubes. Liquid is passed through the tubes and it captures
heat from the finned tubes. The hot liquid is then fed back to
the system, maximising and improving the thermal efficiency .
Based on a study conducted by Spirax Sarco , it is shown that
if an economiser is used for a boiler system, it can increase the
efficiency by 1% for every 5 °C reduction of flue gas
temperature. This indicates that the fuel consumption of the
system can be reduced by 5–10% with a payback period of less
than 2 years . Economisers recover the waste heat and improve
the efficiency of a system by preheating the fluid in the system
such as the feedwater in a steam generator or a boiler, so less
energy is required to achieve the boiling temperature. In
another study by Maxxtec , it is noted that regardless of the
design of the system, if the temperature of the flue gas is
reduced by 140 °C, the fuel consumption can be reduced by
7%. It is investigated that several different types of
economisers are available for different applications but they
have the same functionality . These designs include finned
tubes, coiled tubes, non-condensing and condensing
economisers. The condensing and non-condensing types are
mainly used to improve the efficiency of boiler systems,
whereas the other types are commonly used in thermal power
plants and large processing units to recover waste heat from the
flue gas. Having mentioned that, Vandagriff [21] investigates,
economisers that are used for low-temperature heat recovery
namely as deep economisers are also available that are made
out of advanced materials such as Teflon, carbon and stainless-
steel tubes and can withstand the acidic condensate deposition
on the surface of the heat exchanger. Glass-tubed economisers
are on the hand used for gas to gas heat recovery and for low to
medium temperature application
 Waste heat boilers

Waste heat boilers consists of several water tubes

that are placed in parallel to each other and in the direction of
the heat leaving the system. The system is suitable to recover
heat from medium – high temperature exhaust gases and is used
to generate steam as an output. The steam can then be used for
power generation or directed back to the system for energy
recovery . For example, as J + G reports, in a coal power plant
the heat generated from the combustion process after leaving
the combustion chamber has a temperature of up to 1000 °C.
The use of a waste heat boiler in this case allows
the recovery and utilisation of the heat of the flue gas to
vaporise a fluid and produce steam that can be used for energy
generation through turbines and generators. The pressure and
the rate of steam production mainly depends on the temperature
of the waste heat.
If the waste heat is not sufficient for the system to
produce the required amount of steam, an auxiliary burner unit
or an after burner in the exhaust gases can be added to the
system to compensate for that . As Turner reports, waste heat
boilers can also be coupled with other waste heat recovery
equipment such as afterburners, preheaters and finned-tubed
evaporators to improve efficiency by preheating the feed water
and produce superheated steam if required
 Heat Recovery Boiler is a system which recovers
various kinds of waste heat generated from the production
process of steel, non-ferrous metal, chemical, cement etc and
those equipment of industrial furnaces, refuse incinerators,
industrial waste incinerators, and convert such recovered heat
into useful and effective thermal energy. Waste Heat Recovery
Boiler is contributing to industrial society in terms of
improvement of thermal efficiency, energy saving,
environmental protection etc.
 Air preheaters
Air preheaters are mainly used for exhaust-to-air heat
recovery and for low to medium temperature applications. This
system is particularly useful where cross contamination in the
process must be prevented. Such applications can include gas
turbine exhausts and heat recovery from furnaces, ovens, and
steam boilers . Air preheating can be based on two different
designs, the plate type and the heat pipe type. The plate type
consists of parallel plates that are placed perpendicular towards
the incoming cold air inlet. Hot exhaust air is fed into the
channels between the plates, transferring heat to the plates and
creating hot channels, through which the cold air is passed. The
heat pipe type on the other hand consists of a bundle of several
sealed pipes placed in parallel to each other in a container. The
container is split into two sections accommodating cold and hot
air, inlet and outlet.
The pipes inside the container accommodate a
working fluid which when faced with the hot waste gas at one
end of the pipes, evaporates and moves towards the other end
of the pipe where cold air is passing . This results in heat being
absorbed at the hot section of the pipe, which is transferred to
the cold section, heating the cold moving air over the pipes. The
working fluid then condenses and moves towards the hot
section of the pipe, repeating the cycle As Nicholson explain,
there are mainly three commonly used types of air preheaters
which are classified as regenerators, including rotary
regenerators, run around coil, and recuperative.
 These technologies all function with the same
principle as air preheaters, however, have different
configurations and used for different purposes
 Recuperators
Recuperators are a form of heat exchanger units
that are usually made out of metallic or ceramic materials,
depending on their application, and they are used to recover
waste exhaust gases at medium to high temperature In this
technology, the hot exhaust gases are passed through a series of
metal tubes or ducts that carry the inlet air from atmosphere.
This result in the recuperator preheating the inlet gas which
then re-enters the system. The energy that is now available in
the system can therefore be described as the energy which does
not have to be supplied by the fuel, meaning that a decrease in
energy demand and production costs is achieved . Metallic
recuperators are used for applications with low – medium
temperatures, while heat recovery in high temperature
application is better suited to ceramic recuperators.
 Recuperators can be said to mainly transfer heat to
the inlet gas based on convection, radiation or a combination of
radiation and convection. A radiation recuperator consists of
metallic tubes around the inner shelf where hot exhaust gases
pass through. The cold incoming air is then fed to the tubes
around the hot shelf and heat is radiated to the wall of the tube).
The tubes transfer the heat to the cold air, which is then
delivered to the furnace burners. On the other hand, the
convective recuperator exchanges heat by passing hot exhaust
gases through relatively small diameter tubes that are placed in
a larger shelf. The cold air is passed through the large shelf,
picking up heat from the small hot tubes inside the shelf that is
heated by the waste gas.
A combination of radiant and convective
recuperators provides another possibility which can maximise
heat transfer effectiveness. In this technology, hot exhaust gas
is fed into a larger shelf and then split into smaller diameter
tubes. Cold air is fed into and around the shelf, and this results
in a quantitative improvement in heat transfer.
 Heat recovery steam generator (HRSG)

The heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) is a complex

system used to recover the waste heat from the exhaust of a
power generation plant. It consists of several heat recovery
sections such as an evaporator, super heater, economiser and
steam drum, which are very large in size. By looking at the
configuration of a HRSG in , it can be pointed out that the
superheater is placed in the path of the hottest gas upstream of
the evaporator and the economiser is placed downstream of the
evaporator in coolest gas
Typically, HRSGs comprise a triple pressure system,
this being high pressure, reheat or intermediate pressure and
low pressure . The system can also recover the waste heat from
the exhaust of manufacturing processes to improve overall
efficiencies by generating steam that can be used for process
heating in the factory or for driving a steam turbine to generate
electricity. It is reported that with the use of HRSG for steam
production, a system efficiency of as high as 75–85% can be
achieved.
The system contains an evaporator section and a
steam drum for converting water to steam. The steam is then
superheated as its temperature is increased beyond the
saturation point. As can be seen from, the evaporator is located
between the economiser and the superheater with the steam
drum on top of it. In the evaporator, the steam for the turbine is
generated which is then delivered to the steam drum and the
superheater. As shown in, in the steam drum the steam and
water mixture is separated from the saturated steam as the
feedwater is delivered to the evaporator. The steam is separated
in two steps through a combination of gravity and mechanical
work before it gets delivered to the superheater. This heats the
steam beyond the saturation temperature, i.e. generating
superheated steam. The economiser on the other hand, preheats
the feedwater to the evaporator, thus improving the efficiency
of steam generation. The steam generated in the process is then
sent to a thermodynamic cycle such to generate power and
improve the efficiency of the plant
 Heat pumps
A heat pump is a thermodynamic device which takes
and transfers heat from a heat source and to a heat sink using a
small amount of energy Heat pumps collect heat from air,
water, or ground and are categorised as air-to-air, water source
and geothermal heat pumps. Heat pumps can be used as an
efficient alternative to furnaces and air conditioners to cool or
heat an environment Having mention that, Chua explains that
heat pump systems can also be used to offer economical and
efficient alternative of recovering heat from various sources to
improve overall energy efficiency. In this sight and as
McMullan describes the heat pump has become an important
component in the context of WHR and energy efficient
processes.
A heat pump works with the same principle as
refrigerators and airconditioners, however, employs a
refrigerant cycle to produce hot air and/or water by extracting
heat from a heat source and passing that to an evaporator to heat
the refrigerant at low pressure. This is then delivered to a
compressor to produce high pressure and temperature gas that
can be delivered to a heat exchanger (condenser] Baradey
discusses that heat pump in particular are good for low-
temperature WHR, as they give the capability to upgrade waste
heat to a higher temperature and quality. This was for instance
demonstrated in a study, where, from a heat source of 45–60
°C, the heat pump delivered almost 2.5–11 times more useful
energy comparing to other
WHR systems used for the equal heat input].
Through reclaiming waste heat that is dissipated into the
environment and upgrading it by the means of a heat pump, a
resulting useful heat can be generated and used directly for the
process to reduce the energy intake and improve the overall
efficiency of the system
 Low-temperature waste heat recovery
challenges and opportunities
Recovering waste heat is more feasible and easier when
temperatures are in the medium – high range . Having said that,
there are vast opportunities for recovering waste heat in the low
temperature range as most industrial waste heat is in this
category, as demonstrated by Haddad et al. and shown in
Nevertheless, recovering low temperature waste heat is found
to be more challenging than medium – high temperature waste
heat. The reason for this is mainly because of the problems
associated with the method of collecting the waste. For
instance, water vapour exists in low temperature exhaust gases
and it tends to cool down, mix with other particles and deposit
corrosive solids onto heat exchanger surfaces Heat exchanger
surfaces therefore have to be cleaned or replaced on a regular
basis to maintain the functionality of the heat exchanger, which
can be uneconomical. The use of advanced materials that
minimise corrosion and reduce the need for regular
maintenance in this regard should therefore be considered In
addition, as the heat transfer rate is low when recovering
lowtemperature waste heat, large heat exchangers may be
required to achieve optimum heat transfer. This is mainly
because convective heat transfer rates are a function of
temperature difference between two locations and the area
through which heat is transferred . Having said this, the cost of
equipment used to recover heat for low temperature
applications may be less as lower waste heat temperatures
allow the use of less expensive materials . Nonetheless, the
main challenge with the low temperature waste heat recovery
can be finding a use for the recovered heat. Potential uses for
low temperature waste heat can include using a heat pump to
improve and increase heat to a higher temperature and the use
of the waste heat to produce domestic hot water, space heating
and process heating

Summary table

The table below shows a summary of all the

technologies investigated in this paper including
their temperature range, benefits and limitations:
 Waste heat recovery opportunities in industry
Different industrial processes consume different amounts of
energy and produce different quantities and qualities of waste
heat. To take advantage of the potential of industrial waste heat,
it is therefore essential to look into and analyse the industrial
processes used in large energy consuming industries and to
investigate what suitable waste heat recovery methods can be
applied to the systems of each sector. As mentioned before and
indicated by McKenna and Norman , the largest amounts of
industrial waste heat in the UK are mainly associated with
cement, ceramics, iron and steel, refineries, glassmaking,
chemicals, paper and pulp, and food and drink industries. When
considering waste heat recovery options for industrial
processes, it is important to examine the source and the
usefulness of the waste heat produced and discover which
waste heat recovery method is the most suitable. In this paper,
the iron and steel, ceramic and food industries were selected to
investigate how optimising energy management through the
use of waste heat recovery systems could be achieved in each
sector. The reason for selecting the mentioned industries to
conduct further investigations for the application of WHR is
give an indication how and what WHR technologies can be
applied to different industrial and production processes that
demonstrate all waste heat temperature ranges (low-high).