ChE 327 Process Heat Transfer

Semester 2, 2007
Final Exam

Duration: 2 hours plus 10 minutes reading time

Calculators are allowed

Formula sheets, notes or textbooks are NOT permitted

Total marks: 100

Question 1 [25 marks]

Zippo Corporation has developed an apparatus for measuring the thermal conductivity
of solids. The apparatus consists of two long rods that are identical, except that one is
made from a reference material of known thermal conductivity kR, while the other is
made from the test material whose thermal conductivity kT is to be determined. Both
rods are:
attached at one end to a heat source that maintains a constant temperature Ts
exposed to a flowing fluid of temperature T
instrumented with thermocouples that measure the temperature at a fixed
distance x = X from the heat source.
If Zippo engineers use aluminium as the reference material (kR = 200 W/mK) and
measurements show TR = 75C and TT = 60C at x = X for Ts = 100C and T = 25C,
what is the thermal conductivity kT of the test material?

Question 2 [25 marks]

The utility room in a city office building contains warm air. There is an uninsulated
circular duct (15 m long, 0.3 m diameter, with thin walls) containing chilled air that
passes through the utility room on its way to further duties. Natural circulation
provides a heat transfer coefficient of 2 W/m2K on the outside surface of the duct. If
the air in the utility room is at 37C, and the chilled air enters the duct at 7C and with
a flowrate of 0.05 kg/s, then:
what is the temperature of the chilled air at the end of the duct?
what is the rate of heat gain by the air in the duct?
Comment on the result.

Further information:
You can assume an average temperature of 300 K for evaluating the properties
of chilled air.
The Dittus-Boelter equation is given by:
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Nu D 0.023ReD Pr n
where n = 0.4 for heating of the fluid; n = 0.3 for cooling of the fluid; and the
range of validity is: 0.6 Pr 160, ReD 104, and L/D 10.

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Question 3 [25 marks]
You are asked to size a boiler that generates saturated steam from high temperature
exhaust gas. The exchanger is to have an un-finned cross-flow design with water
flowing in the tubes and the gas flowing outside. The gas has a flowrate of 10 kg/s,
specific heat capacity of 1120 J/kgK and enters the exchanger at 1400 K. The water
has a flowrate of 3 kg/s, enters as a saturated liquid at 450 K and leaves the exchanger
as a saturated vapour at the same temperature. Youve already estimated the overall
heat transfer coefficient at 50 W/m2K. The exchanger is to have 500 tubes each with
0.025 m diameter. What is the required length of each tube?

Question 4 [25 marks]

A radiation shield of diameter D2 = 60 mm is concentric with a long pipe of diameter
D1 = 20 mm transporting hot process fluid. The gap between the inside surface of the
shield and the pipe is evacuated. The pipe surface is black, while the radiation shield
is diffuse and grey with emmisivities of 2,i = 0.01 and 2,o = 0.1 on its inner and outer
surfaces, respectively. The outside surface of the shield is exposed to combined
convection and radiation heat fluxes because:
it is located in large room whose walls are at Tsur = 17C, and
it experiences a flow of air at T = 27C with a heat transfer coefficient of
h = 10 W/m2K.

What is the operating temperature of the pipe if the shield temperature is maintained
at T2 = 42C?

Data: = 5.6710-8 W/m2K4

Shield: diameter D2
2,i

2,o
Air: T, h

Walls: Tsur
Vacuum
Hot pipe: diameter D1

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Figures and tables needed to solve the problems

Thermophysical properties of air at atmospheric pressure

Thermophysical properties of saturated water

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END OF EXAMINATION PAPER

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