Experimental research on the heat transfer and water recovery performance of transport membrane condenser

Highlights: • 46 ceramic membrane tubes were used to make a transport membrane condenser. • Experimental platform was constructed to recover water and heat from flue gas. • Heat transfer performances were tested under different working conditions. -- Abstract: Transport membrane condenser (TMC) is a device for extracting moisture and heat from the exhaust. This paper designs a TMC which contains 46 ceramic membrane tubes to treat the exhaust from a gas-fired boiler. The trends of the recovered water flux, the convective heat transfer coefficient, and latent and sensible heat under different experimental conditions are investigated. The experimental results show that the heat transfer and water recovery performance of the TMC can be increased by increasing the flowrate of flue gas and cooling water, and increasing the temperature difference between flue gas and cooling water. Compared with other studies, the novelty of this paper is reflected in two aspects. Firstly, using TMC consisting of ceramic membranes with the pore size of 1 μm can recover more water than traditional TMC. Secondly, the convective heat transfer coefficient, latent heat and sensible heat released by flue gas are calculated quantitatively under different working conditions. The maximum recovered water flux is 15.77 kg/(m² h), and the latent heat released by condensation accounts for more than 75% of the total heat released by the flue gas.