Numerical Investigation of Heat Transfer and Condensation Rate in Two-Stage Transport Membrane Condenser Heat Exchanger Units

Heat and water recovery using Transport Membrane Condenser (TMC) based heat exchangers is a promising technology in power generation industry. In this type of innovative heat exchangers the tube walls are made of a nano-porous material and have a high membrane selectivity which is able to extract condensate water from the flue gas in the presence of the other non-condensable gases such as CO₂, O₂ and N₂. Considering the fact that for industrial applications, a matrix of TMC heat exchangers with several TMC modulus in the cross section or along the flow direction is necessary. Numerical simulation of multi-stage TMC heat exchanger units is of a great importance in terms of design, performance evaluation and optimization. In this work, performance of a two-stage TMC heat exchanger unit has been studied numerically using a multi-species transport model. In order to investigate the performance of the two-stage TMC heat exchanger unit, parametric study on the effect of transversal and longitudinal pitches in terms of heat transfer, pressure drop and condensation rate inside the heat exchangers have been carried out. The results indicate that the heat transfer and condensation rates both increase by reducing TMC tube pitches in the second stage and increasing the number of TMC tube pitches in the first stage of the units.