Heat Loss in Industry: Boiler Performance Analysis

Boiler performance and efficiency evaluation is generally performed by direct and indirect methods as reported in three boiler performance evaluation codes which will be the subject of our study (ASME PTC4-2008, IS13979: 1994 and BS845-1: 1987 codes). On the one hand, ASME code PTC4-2008 describes in detail the indirect method with different types of losses; some of them are applied in certain exceptional cases. On the other hand, IS13979: 1994 and BS845-1: 1987 codes commonly introduce six types of losses. In literature, direct and indirect methods are widely used to calculate boilers efficiency, and it’s found that indirect method is more effective than direct method which is confirmed by the present study. The present work aims to compare boilers efficiency by direct and indirect methods, while matching the heat losses formulas proposed by the codes mentioned above with other formulas found in literature. Therefore, we will conduct the performance evaluation of a fire tube boiler burning fuel (HHV 9238,55 kcal/kg) through formulas retained from this study. Indirect method is found to be more effective and accurate than the direct method, and the major heat losses are dry combustion gases loss as well as water produced by hydrogen in fuel loss. Furthermore, some unavoidable losses occur for various reasons. However, energy lost could be reused by means of different energy recovery technologies.