Case Studies in Thermal Engineering 5 (2015) 127133

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Case Studies in Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/csite

Prototype implementation and experimental analysis of water

heating using recovered waste heat of chimneys
Mahmoud Khaled a,b,n, Mohamad Ramadan a, Khaled Chahine a, Ali Assi a
a
b

School of Engineering, Lebanese International University LIU, PO Box 146404 Beirut, Lebanon
Univ Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cit, Interdisciplinary Energy Research Institute (PIERI), Paris, France

a r t i c l e i n f o

abstract

Article history:
Received 3 February 2015
Received in revised form
9 March 2015
Accepted 12 March 2015
Available online 26 March 2015

This work discusses a waste heat recovery system (WHRS) applied to chimneys for heating
water in residential buildings. A prototype illustrating the suggested system is implemented and tested. Different waste heat scenarios by varying the quantity of burned
firewood (heat input) are experimented. The temperature at different parts of the WHRS
and the gas flow rates of the exhaust pipes are measured. Measurements showed that the
temperature of 95 L tank of water can be increased by 68 C within one hour. Obtained
results show that the convection and radiation exchanges at the bottom surface of the
tank have a considerable impact on the total heat transfer rate of the water (as high as
70%).
& 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC
BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Keywords:
Waste heat
Chimney
Convection
Radiation
Heat recovery
Saving energy

1. Introduction
In todays world, characterized by continuously increasing energy demands, soaring energy prices and pressing ecological problems, WHRS stands out as an accessible and cost-effective solution to reducing consumption and improving efficiency [16]. It is defined as the capture of heat contained in fluids or gases of systems such as internal combustion
engines, heat pumps, chillers, and power generators; heat that can be used to produce other forms of energy, otherwise
would be lost.
A basic requirement for WHRS is that the temperature of waste heat must be high enough to serve as a useful heat
source. One application, which would greatly benefit from waste heat recovery, is water heating [79]. The reason is that
water heating requires a major share of energy consumption in buildings where living and food preparation occur. In [10], a
system was designed to couple a residential refrigerator with a water-cooled condenser/pre-heater. Results showed the
ability to heat water by as much as 7.6 C (high water use), 20.3 C (low water use), and 10.2 C (water use of a typical
family). Furthermore, an economic analysis revealed that 18.3% saving could be achieved in the water heater operation cost.
In [11], a waste heat recovery device was integrated with a split air conditioning system. Experiments showed that the water
temperature can be raised from 30 C to 75 C in eight hours of operation. A similar system that supplies hot water as a
byproduct of air conditioning is discussed in [12]. Depending on the selected flow rate, the system was able to raise water
temperature by 10 C to 16 C in approximately 20 min. The test results also revealed that for flow rates ranging from 0.5 l/
min to 2 l/min, maximum coefficient of performance was obtained at 2 l/min.
n

Corresponding author at: School of Engineering, Lebanese International University LIU, PO Box 146404 Beirut, Lebanon.
E-mail address: mahmoud.khaled@liu.edu.lb (M. Khaled).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.csite.2015.03.004
2214-157X/& 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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M. Khaled et al. / Case Studies in Thermal Engineering 5 (2015) 127133

Nomenclature

Subscripts

E
E
m
Q
t
T
V

rad
conv
w
t

energy, J
power, W
mass flow rate, kg/s
volumetric flow rate, m3/s
time, s
temperature, C
volume, m3

radiation
convection
water
tank

Symbols

density, kg/m3

In countries like Lebanon with heavy dependency on imported fossil fuel, insufficient electric power production, outdated thermal power plants and weakness in the energy management in most of its power domains, it is worth investigating the waste heat recovery for water heating [1316]. To this end, the present work suggests a WHRS applied to
chimney where a prototype is implemented and tested and experimental analysis is performed. Indeed, chimneys are
widely used in Lebanon to insure the necessary heating load of occupied spaces. Chimneys are thermal systems that burn
fuels or firewood to produce heat which can be transferred in part and not totally to the space to be conditioned. During the
transformation cycle, considerable magnitudes of heat energy are lost through the exhaust gases which can reach temperatures as high as 300 C or more depending on the application [17,18] and the thermal conductivities of the materials
under consideration [19,20]. The main idea of this work is to make use of the energy of chimney exhaust gases in the hot
water supply by passing the exhaust gases through pipes inserted in a water tank placed at approximately 0.5 m from the
combustion area of the chimney. Experiments are followed by a thermal analysis of the new design.

2. Description of the Prototype

Fig. 1 shows the functional block diagram of the proposed waste heat recovery system.
The energy input resulting from burning fuel or firewood is divided between useful heating load (8090%) transferred to
the space to be heated and 1020% of heat in the exhaust gases. The principle of the proposed WHRS is to circulate the
exhaust gases into pipes inserted in a water tank connected to a cold water supply. Heat transfer by radiation and convection occurs then between the exhaust gases and the water we need to heat.
As shown in Fig. 2, the prototype illustrating the idea consists of a brazier base and an upper part, stands, a water tank,
pipes inserted in the tank and a nozzle.
The different components and dimensions of the prototype are detailed as follows:
1. Stainless steel galvanized sheet and a conic shaped metal: the sheet has a thickness of 0.001 m, a length of 1.2 m and a
width of 1 m; the conic shaped metal has a small diameter of 0.1 m, a large diameter of 0.4 m and a length of 0.3 m.
2. Stainless steel galvanized pipes: each pipe has a thickness of 0.002 m, a length of 1 m and a diameter of 0.042 m.
3. Two U-shaped stands: the stand has a height of 0.92 m and a width of 0.64 m.
4. Brazier: the base has a length of 0.76 m, a width of 0.39 m, a depth of 0.2 m and a leg of 0.06 m. The upper part has a
length of 0.7 m from the bottom side surface and a length of 0.35 m at its upper surface.
The metal sheet is bent and welded into a cylindrical shape with radius of 0.38 m. To obtain a cylindrical storage tank
with net volume of almost 95 L, two disks are attached (welded) to the cylinder, one at the top and another at the bottom.
Fuel or
firewood
Air

Exhaust
gases

Chimney
Heating
load

Occupied
space

Water
tank

Cold water
supply
Exhaust gases
cooled

Hot water

Fig. 1. Functional block diagram of the proposed WHRS.

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129

Fig. 2. Prototype of the chimney with WHRS.

Seven holes are drilled on each disk, and seven pipes go through the holes within the cylinder and are welded on both disks
of the tank (top and bottom).
Once the tank with pipes as described above is manufactured, four holes are drilled on the tank, two of them are on the
upper right side, one on the middle right side, and the fourth on the lower left side of the tank. These holes are added for the
steam dispenser, the inlet and outlet valves, and a pressure reader.
On the upper surface of the brazier, a 0.38 m hole is drilled. A 0.05 long cylinder is welded along this hole (the tank fits
perfectly round this cylinder on the upper surface of the brazier).
Since the brazier cannot withstand the heavy mass of the tank (almost 115 kg when fully filled) a stand is designed to
hold it. Finally, a conic shaped metal is fixed on the upper part of the tank with 0.1 m diameter tube at the top playing the
role of exhaust for the WHRS. The later setup can be made with the desired shape depending on where the prototype will be
placed and tested.

3. Experimental setup
A thermometer and a pressure sensor are attached to the water tank respectively on the upper front side and middle
right side. The steam dispenser is used to evacuate the steam generated inside the tank. Two K-type thermocouples are
placed at the inlet and outlet sections of the centered pipe (the pipe placed at the center of the tank).
Since the smoke leaves the exhaust with very low velocity, a very sensitive flow meter and adequate installation precautions should be applied. To make measurements simple and gain time the following procedure was adopted: A Hoover
bag was attached to the exhaust tube and the time t required for the bag to be completely filled with smoke was measured.
The volume V of the bag can be measured and the volumetric flow rate Q can be obtained from:

Q=

V
t

(1)

Finally, the mass flow rate can be calculated from:

m = Q
where is the density of gases flowing through the exhaust.

(2)

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3.1. Test with the pipes closed

A first test is performed with the pipes closed from the bottom side. This test allows separating between two heat
transfers. The first one occurs between the exhaust gases leaving directly the brazier (before entering the pipes) and the
bottom of the tank and the radiations that occur between the brazier becoming hot and the base of the tank. The second is
the heat transfer by convection that would occur between the exhaust gases flowing in the pipes and the water to be heated
in the tank. The bottoms of the pipes holes are covered with an aluminum foil. This test is done by burning an average
amount of wood in the brazier, waiting for the wood to be completely burned out, and recording the temperature of water
inside the tank with the time needed to reach this temperature. For this test, the complete burning of the used wood took
almost one hour.
3.2. Test with the pipes open
A second test is performed to verify the performance of the system in its normal operation with the pipes open. After
applying an average amount of wood in the brazier and firing it up, the temperature of water started to rise gradually. The
values of the inlet and outlet smoke temperatures and the temperature of water were recorded almost every minute. For the
mass flow rate of the exhaust smoke, values were recorded every 5 min using the technique mentioned above.

4. Results and analysis

Fig. 3a shows the temperature variations for both open-pipe and closed-pipe cases.
Although the temperature increases more with open pipes, there is considerable increase in the case of closed pipes.
During one hour, the water temperature increases from 10 to 78 C when the pipes are open and from 10 to 48 C when the
pipes are closed. The energy Ew gained by water during the time t is the summation of energy gained by radiation from the
hot metal constituting the brazier Erad , energy gained by convection at the bottom surface of the tank Econv, bottom and energy
gained by convection with the inserted pipes Econv, pipes :

Ew = Erad + Econv, bottom + Econv, pipes

(3)

Transformed to power form, Eq. (3) can be written as:

+ Econv
, bottom + Econv
, pipes
Ew = Erad

Fig. 3. Temporal variations of (a) water temperature and (b) water temperature difference due to convection with pipes only.

(4)

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131

Fig. 4. Variations of the convection rate with pipes and the total heat rate.

The advantage of performing double testing with open and closed pipes is that one can obtain the temperature variation
due to convection (Fig. 3b) with pipes only, when subtracting the temperature variation with closed pipes from the variation
with open pipes.
The total energy gained by water during one hour is 27.13 MJ where 8.38 MJ (31%) are from convection with the pipes
and 18.75 MJ (69%) from convection and radiation at the bottom surface of the tank. In terms of power, the average total
heat transfer rate is 7.54 kW, of which 2.33 kW are from convection with the pipes and 5.21 kW from convection and
radiation at the bottom surface of the tank.
The rate of heat transfer by convection with the pipes and the total heat transfer rate of water can be calculated respectively from the following two equations:

, pipes = Vt
Econv
w

Ew = w Vt

(T )
T (t + t) T (t)
= w Vt
t
t

Tw (t + t) Tw (t)
Tw
= w Vt
t
t

(5)

(6)

where w is the water density, Vt is the tank volume, Tw is the water temperature, t is the time interval of data recording and
T is the difference in temperature between the two cases of open and closed pipes. Fig. 4 shows the variation of the pipes

Fig. 5. Variations of (a) the gases temperature at the inlet and outlet of the pipes and (b) the gases mass flow rate.

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Fig. 6. Temporal variation of the heat transfer rate calculated from the hot gases side.

convection rate and the total heat transfer rate of water.

Fig. 5 shows the variations of exhaust gases temperature at the inlet and outlet of the pipes as well as the gases flow rate.
At the beginning of the experiment, the inlet and outlet temperatures of smoke were 400 C and 350 C, respectively.
Within one hour, the inlet and outlet temperatures of smoke decreased to 200 C and 175 C, respectively. In addition, the
mass flow rate was considerably varying around an average of 0.09 kg/s.
Fig. 6 shows the variation of the total heat transfer rate calculated this time from the exhaust gases side as:

= Ew = m gas Cp, gas (Tin, gas Tout, gas )

Egas

(7)

where m gas is the gas flow rate, Cp, gas is the specific heat of gases and Tin, gas and Tout , gas are, respectively, the inlet and outlet
temperatures of the gases. The total heat transfer rate variation is almost equivalent to that presented for the water side of
Fig. 6 but with greater values. The difference between the two curves corresponds to the heat losses of the water tank with
the surrounding ambient temperature of air.

5. Conclusions
This research work discussed and analyzed a prototype of a novel concept for water heating using the waste heat resulting from the operation of chimneys in residential buildings. The suggested WHRS is capable of increasing the temperature of water from 10 to 78 C during one hour of chimney operation.
Obtained results show also that the convection and radiation exchanges at the bottom surface of the tank have a considerable impact on the total heat transfer rate of the water (as high as 70%).

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