Testing the Heat Transfer of a Drain Water Heat Recovery Heat Exchanger

Abstract: This study investigates the change in thermal resistance due to fouling in drain water pipes. As insulation of houses and energy efficiency of appliances improve, the importance of Drain Water Heat Recovery (DWHR) is growing steadily. In older houses, the relative heat loss through drain water is smaller than in newly built houses, but should still be considered. For example, 17 % of the total heat loss in Swedish multi-family houses built before 1940 was transported with the drain water (Ekelin et al., 2006). The average temperature of drain blackwater is between 23 °C and 26 °C (Seybold & Brunk, 2013), and a part of its heat can be recovered in DWHR systems. This allows cold incoming water to houses and buildings to be pre-heated by drain water before it is heated in the heat pump. Depending on the system, 30 % to 75 % of the heat from drain water can be recovered (Zaloum et al., 2007b). A threat to heat exchanger performance is that additional materials, so called fouling, accumulate on the surfaces of the heat exchangers and increases its thermal resistance. This resistance can be described by a fouling resistance and can be very costly due to losses in heat transfer and required cleaning. To quantify the fouling resistance, experiments were conducted in a climate chamber on Brinellvägen 66, using a pipe that had been installed for 3 years in the sewage system from the men’s toilet on Brinellvägen 64B. The installed pipe was compared with a pipe from the same manufacturer with the same dimensions. The pipes were sealed and filled with water at about 20 °C. Thermocouples were used to measure the decrease in water temperature over time in both pipes. Based on these measurements, the difference in thermal resistance was found, using curve fitting and the Lumped Capacitance Method. The fouling resistance was quantified by comparing the thermal resistances of the test pipe with and without fouling. The main findings were firstly that fouling significantly increases the thermal resistance of aluminium pipes. Secondly, corrosion causes a significant decrease in the pipes’ thermal resistance. The combination of these effects led to a decrease of 14 % in thermal resistance in the examined system after three years compared to the time of installation. The decrease in thermal resistance due to corrosion in the test pipe was 44 % compared to the time of installation. Furthermore, the thermal resistance of the test pipe decreased by 51 % when it was cleaned from the fouling. The fouling resistance of the 0.81 mm fouling layer was found to be 0.03068 m2K/W.