Strategies for the Numerical Modelling of Regenerative Pre-heating Systems for Recycled Glass Raw Material.

The rules on energy consumption and pollutant emissions impose increasingly restrictive limitations in today’s industrial sectors. The glass production sector is one of the highest sources of energy consumption in Europe, but also in Italy. For this reason it is very important to develop strategies for consumption reduction in a glass production plant. A glass furnace is in fact conceived with systems to recover heat from the combustion gases through regenerative and recuperative systems in order to increase the efficiency of the plant. Several systems to reduce nitrogen oxides emissions have been also developed and designed. A further method to exploit the residual heat from the exhausted gases is to pre-heat the recycled glass raw material to be introduced into the furnace so as to require a smaller amount of energy for its melting. This paper shows various numerical strategies for the design of a pre-heating system for the recycled glass raw material through CFD techniques. In this regard, numerical models have been developed for systems with direct (hot gases come directly into contact with the raw material) and indirect heat exchange (the raw material is heated through the diffusion of heat from a tube bundle). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]