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Heat Transfer in Rotary Kilns
Heat Transfer in Rotary Kilns
by Greg Palmer, B.E. Ph.D. and Tony Howes, B.E. Ph.D. Palmer Technologies Pty Ltd, Brisbane, Australia
Introduction
Rotary kilns are one of the most widely used pieces of processing equipment. They are used for drying or calcining a variety of products including sand, aggregates, limestone and food products. With an ever increasing focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the continued or increased use of rotating kilns can only be achieved by reducing the thermal and electrical energy consumption used in these processes. Heat transfer in kilns is very complex, with radiation, convection and conduction all contributing to energy transfer between the gas, the feed and the vessel wall. A fluid bed calciner or dryer achieves rapid drying by the large heat transfer coefficient obtained through the high air volume being circulated. The penalty is the increase in electrical energy required to circulate this high air volume. Rotary kilns on the other hand have poor heat transfer coefficients, hence higher thermal energy demand, due to the need for larger devices and thus more opportunity for heat to be lost. In most rotary kiln operations the chemical reactions in the bed require high temperature, for example cement kilns will require temperatures of approximately 15000C. The energy to raise the temperature and drive endothermic reactions is from the combustion of a range of fuels such as natural gas, coal and more and more alternative fuels. Heat transfer from the gas to the bed is complex and occurs from the gas to the bed surface and kiln wall to bed surface via conduction, convection and radiation. A number of rotary kiln models have been proposed over the years and recent computational fluid dynamic models can be developed but all have their limitations. Most assume isothermal conditions through the bed at any axial position. However, practically it is known that such conditions do not exist as product variations are known to occur, for example in lime kilns where fine particles are calcined and larger particles are only partly calcined. The bed motion regime, either cascading, rolling or slumping depends on the rotational speed of the kiln, the percentage fill and the feed physical properties. The work carried out by Palmer Technologies is aimed at understanding and improving the heat transfer in a rotary kiln and to provide a systematic basis for the efficient design of new kilns.
Previous Work
A number of experimental studies on a pilot size rotary kiln have been carried out by Brimacombe and Watkinson (1978) and others. The size of the kiln used in their studies is approximately 5.5m long x 0.406 m diameter. One of the most significant findings of this early work was the importance of transverse solids mixing to the overall heat transfer to the bed. It was clear that heat flow within the bed was a two step process, one, heating of a thin layer on the bed surface and two, mixing of this layer into the bed. Existing models provide correlations for individual heat transfer from wall to gas and solid, wall to gas and heat transfer through the wall and from the outside of the wall. These models have considered
Cement Industry Federation Technical Conference 1998
radiation, convection and conduction heat transfer, as well as solids and gas transverse and axial mixing. The validation of any model is extremely importance for the effective use of the model as a design tool. Validation to heat transfer has been done using existing operational pilot plants and small scale kilns. However, further validation is still required to scale up to larger kilns. Obtaining good heat transfer in large kilns is difficult due to the physical size, steady operating conditions, internal cycling and dust generation that can impact on temperature measurements taken during trials and separating radiation and convection heat transfer. A summary of the finds has been collated and presented in Table 1 below. It can be seen that the most significant factor on the rotary kiln design and heat transfer is convective heat transfer from the hot gas to the bed followed by radiation heat transfer from the flame. The process impacts of kiln speed and throughput have little effect on the heat transfer to the solids. However, the effect of secondary air temperature on heat transfer is significant and can lead to a lower of the thermal efficiency or more importantly lower throughput. Table 1
process effects increasing rotational speed increases slightly hgas solids increasing rotational speed decreases significantly hgas
wall
increasing the degree of fill decreases slightly hgas solids the degree of fill is independent of hgas
wall
both heat transfer coefficients are independent of solids throughput and inclination angle at high feed rates and rpm heat flow is limited by heat transfer from the gas to the bed effect of secondary air temp raising the sec air temp significantly increases the flame length but only minor effect on max. flame temp and solids heat flux. The increase in the flame length is due to a decrease in the entrainment rate of the secondary air owing to its lower density. increasing the sec air temp by a factor of 2.5 doubles the heat transferred to the solids in the flame zone. Since the max. heat flux is not increased significantly the use of preheat air is a good method to improve kiln productivity without overburdening the product. Oxygen enrichment of the flame reduces the flame length and increases the flame temp and peak solids heat flux. The net effect is to increase the heat received by the solids. O2 enrichment may be used to increase solids throughput. Gas to solids heat flow gas to solids heat transfer is about ten times higher than gas to wall heat transfer gas to solids heat flux has little effect at high rpm but larger effects at low rpm the effect of gas temperature increases with rotational speed under rolling bed conditions the heat flux is independent of solids throughput, rpm and percentage fill convective heat transfer to the bed plays the dominate role contributing 70 to 80 % of the total heat flux radiation appears to account for less than 30% of the gas to solids heat flow on the gas to solids side Cement Industry Federation Technical Conference 1998
The model developed is for a rotary kiln 132 metres long and 4.2 metres in diameter. In this paper only the drying of an alumina de-watered slurry in the kiln will be discussed. The feed rate used is 42 tph with a moisture content of 9%. Only drying of the feed has been included in the model. A process flow diagram is presented in Figure 2. Whereas in the real situation both drying and calcining of alumina occurs. The reason for using alumina is that it is a simpler starting point for future model validation. The process data is presented in Table 2. The drying only model balances the energy input in the natural gas and the energy lost in the exit gas and radiation and convection from the kiln shell. As mentioned previously the model takes into account convection, radiation and conduction from combustion and from the hot gas. A combustion profile is incorporated into the model to simulate the non instantaneous combustion process. Drying of the solids in an alumina kiln is not assisted by a chain system, as is the case with a long wet cement kiln. The drying occurs by a gradual heating of the solids surface, then mixing of the top layer as the kiln turns then conduction within the bed. It is known that the average bed temperature will continue to increase as the material moves along the kiln in the axial direction, ie not all the energy to the bed goes into the latent heat of vapourization. The output form the model in Figure 3. The plots give the axial temperature profile heat flux profile and gas velocity profile.
185 38,781 72.13 tph hydrate ESP exit 105,836 270 5.00% 42.7% Sm3/hr (wet) C O2 moist
Sm3/h C % O2
Figure 2 Process Flow Diagram (energy balance) The model for this simple case shows that the heating of the solids is by convection from the gas to the feed solids then from the feed surface to the feed centre. Thr negative sign in the attached graphs is not a loss of energy from the system but the direction of energy flow. For example the negative value for energy in the kiln wall (internal wall) to the feed centre means that the energy flow is from the wall to the feed and continues up until the feed almost leaves the kiln then the energy value becomes positive which means that the feed is cooling down by allowing energy to flow from the feed to the kiln wall.
Temperature C
2000
Temperature (C)
1500
1000
500 0
0 50 100 150
Conclusions
The kiln model which uses existing heat transfer correlations for rotating kiln and incorporates in-kiln combustion provides a tool for modelling temperature, calcining, drying, in a rotating kiln. This model, when further validated using literature and other experimental data, will provide an exciting tool for tuning the operation of existing kilns, and to provide a systematic basis for the efficient design of new kilns. In further development of the model the aim is to incorporate not only thermal profiles for the rotary section of dry process kilns but the effect of chain systems in long wet kilns including dust entrainment through the chains. Other work being undertaken is the drying of materials like sand, aggregate and slag with internal lifter arrangements. In this area the aim it to design and manufacture units with the latest technological design features which are highly energy efficient and simple to operate.
References
1. Brimacombe and Watkinson, Heat Transfer in a direct fired rotary kiln: 1. Pilot plant and experimentation, Metallurgical Transactions B, Vol 9B June 1978 2. Brimacombe and Watkinson, Heat Transfer in a direct fired rotary kiln: I1. Heat flow results and their interpretation, Metallurgical Transactions B, Vol 9B June 1978 3. Tscheng and Watkinson, Convective heat transfer in a rotary kiln, The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, Vol 57 August 1979 4. Gorog, Adams and Brinacombe, Heat transfer from flames in a rotary kiln, Metallurgical Transactions B, Vol 14B September 1983 5. Barr, Brimacombe and Watkinson, A heat transfer model for the rotary kiln: Part II Development of the cross-section model, Metallurgical Transactions B, Vol 20B June 1989 6. Barr, Brimacombe and Watkinson, A heat transfer model for the rotary kiln: Part II Pilot kiln trials, Metallurgical Transactions B, Vol 20B June 1989 7. Boateng and Barr, A thermal model for the rotary kiln including heat transfer within the bed, Int. J. Heat Transfer Vol. 39 No. 10 1996