Reduction of heat loss for an immersion heater

Abstract: In this study, an electrical immersion heater mounted on a water tank has been investigated. Themain aim was to reduce heat transfer and to utilize the maximum energy available from heater toheat the water. To observe the effects of essential geometrical and operating parameters on thesystem performance, different computational test cases were run for three different designs.In the first case of simulation, the immersion heater of existing design mounted on a water tankhas been analyzed. The cold-water tank with inlet and outlet and given appropriate boundaryconditions was used to see the temperature contours inside the water tank and temperature of theimmersion layer itself.In the second case, an insulation plate has been introduced in the immersion heater head in orderto reduce heat loss by considering the possible heat leakage through the gap inside the heaterhead by radiation.In the third case, an insulation ring has been introduced in the immersion heater head as asubstitute for the insulation plate which has the same aim as second case.The results obtained from the CFD simulation shows the thermal performance of immersionheater in a water tank for three different cases. The results are helpful in optimizing both heatingelement and immersion heater by introducing different changes to optimize the design. It showsthat the redesigned immersion heater and storage tank can provide improved working conditions.Also, at early design stages, CFD simulations could be used as an effective tool to optimizethermal storage tank parameters, so it may add value to the storage tank and immersion heaterperformance and efficiency, by optimizing the whole thermal heating system design and size.Different materials and geometry design are tested giving the minimum heat losses from thesystem and uniform temperature distribution in the water heater.