The design and retrofit of the heat exchangers in a boiler should take into account the processes occurring on the side of combustion and steam. For this reason, this study aims to couple a one-dimensional hydrodynamic model of steam with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of flue gas.
Radiant/semi-radiant platen heat exchangers are simplified as plane surfaces for CFD, while convective heat exchangers are introduced into the CFD simulation as energy/momentum absorption sources.
Numerical simulation is performed for a 1,000 MWe coal-fired ultra-supercritical boiler. The calculation results are validated by the thermodynamic design data. Tube outside surface temperature, as well as ash deposit temperature distributions, are obtained.
Complex tube arrangements can be completed with the aid of AutoCAD, and therefore, the simulation could offer detailed information of heat exchangers. In a word, a more reliable modeling of the whole steam generation process is achieved.
