Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Calculate Available Heat PDF
Calculate Available Heat PDF
Prepared By:
E3M Inc.
May 2012
i
Disclaimer
The CEC and its contractor, Southern California Gas Company and subcontractor E3M Inc. has
made reasonable efforts to ensure all information is correct. However, neither The CEC’s,
Southern California Gas Company’s or E3M Inc.’s publication nor verbal representations thereof
constitutes any statement, recommendation, endorsement, approval or guaranty (either express or
implied) of any product or service. Moreover, The CEC, Southern California Gas Company, or
E3M Inc. shall not be responsible for errors or omissions in this publication, for claims or
damages relating to the use thereof, even if it has been advised of the possibility of such
damages.
Executive Summary
This calculator tool is used to calculate available heat for natural gas and other gaseous fuels that
are primarily used by California industries. The available heat is defined as the amount of heat
remaining in heating equipment (i.e. furnace, oven, boiler, heater, kiln etc.) after the heat
contained within flue gasses and other losses are subtracted from the total heat supplied to the
heating equipment. The heat that remains in the furnace is directly applied to the process. The
term available heat is useful in preparing a heat balance for process equipment such as furnaces
or boilers. For most commonly used heating systems, the available heat depends on the
following main parameters:
Composition of fuel
Exhaust gas temperature
Oxygen (or excess air) in exhaust gases
Combustion air temperature
Fuel temperature
This calculator allows the user to give all of the above parameters as input parameters. The
calculator results are given in terms of percent available heat for the given fuel at the user
defined operating conditions.
For many energy saving measures, the calculation of available heat is required to reliably
estimate energy savings potential. The available heat calculator is considered an essential part of
many calculators offered in a series of calculators offered by the California Energy Commission
(CEC) web site. Results obtained by use of this calculator have been verified by comparing them
with commonly used references (1 to 3) in process heating industry. The results are within 5%
accuracy and much closer for most commonly used exhaust gas temperatures between 400 °F
and 2000 °F.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Disclaimer ..................................................................................................................................................... ii
iii
LIST OF EXHIBITS
iv
Calculate Available Heat for Natural Gas Fuel
1
Calculate Available Heat for Natural Gas Fuel
2
Calculate Available Heat for Natural Gas Fuel
assumption does not affect the results since most commonly used natural gas used in California
contains minute amount of such hydrocarbons and error in the results would be very small.
Exhibits 3 and 4 are then used to determine the values of specific heat of the flue gas components
3
Calculate Available Heat for Natural Gas Fuel
such as N2, CO2, H2O, etc. These values are used to calculate total heat content of flue gases.
Where
Water vapor (H2O) 60 520 8.103 18 0.450 21.011 0.0476 0.6238 0.0214
0.023104
Water vapor (H2O) 1000 1460 9.373 18 0.521 21.011 0.0476 0.6238 0.0248
4
Calculate Available Heat for Natural Gas Fuel
Total 100.00
Mean value 0.019183367 0.017982 0.020384837
Where
is the total heat input into the furnace. Expressed in and is calculated using
5
Calculate Available Heat for Natural Gas Fuel
The excess air reduction calculator requires the following input parameters describing the
heating process in order to estimate the savings. Exhibit 5 shows the user information section
and Exhibit 6 shows the calculator section.
The first section requires information about the user, equipment, and process.
Line 1 – Name of the company
Line 2 – Name or known designation such as “main plant” or “secondary plant” if
applicable
Line 3 – Plant address
Line 4 – Contact name – This individual is main contact and is responsible for collecting
and providing the required information.
6
Calculate Available Heat for Natural Gas Fuel
7
Calculate Available Heat for Natural Gas Fuel
air entering the combustion air blower or the ambient temperature around the air
blower. For a case where preheated combustion air is used it is necessary to use
combustion air temperature at the burner or at the exit of the air preheating
equipment such as a recuperator, regenerator or regenerative burners.
Line 25 – % Oxygen (O2) in Combustion Air – This value should remain unchanged
from 20.9 unless the combustion air is enriched with oxygen prior to
combustion.
8
Calculate Available Heat for Natural Gas Fuel
wall of the discharge duct can give erroneous reading. It is also necessary to
make sure that there is no air leakage through the sampling port when the
sampling probe is inserted in the stack or sampling location.
Line 27 – Percent Excess Air (%) – This is a calculated value of excess air present in the
flue gases. It is calculated assuming natural gas is used as fuel. However, this
result is considered valid for different compositions of natural gas and for most
hydrocarbon fuels. Note that this is a first approximation value that is used to
calculate the expected O2 value for the given fuel. The calculated value is
reported in Results section - Line 31 of this calculator.
Note: There is no line 28
Line 29 – Exhaust (flue) Gas Temperature (°F) – Give exhaust or flue gas temperature
measured as close to the exit of the heating system (i.e. furnace, boiler, oven) as
possible. The flue gas temperature should be taken when the heating equipment
is operating at normal operating conditions. It is necessary to make sure that the
flue gases are NOT mixed with cold air before the temperature is measured.
Care should be taken to locate the thermocouple or temperature measurement
sensor in the middle of the stack or area from where the flue gases are
discharged. Measuring the temperature at the top of the stack or very close to
the wall of the discharge duct can give erroneous reading. Note that in almost
all cases the flue gas temperature does not change by any significant value with
the use of preheated combustion air, since the heating equipment zone
temperatures are controlled to meet the required process conditions.
Line 30 – Available Heat (% of higher Heating Value of Fuel) – This is calculated value
and it is based on higher heating value of the given fuel.
9
Calculate Available Heat for Natural Gas Fuel
10