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Chemical Engineer's Guide (https://cheguide.com/)
(https://cheguide.com/2015/12/heat-loss-from-insulated-pipe/)
Heat loss/gain takes place from a pipe carrying hotter/ colder fluid than ambient temperature. Insulation reduces the
heat loss to surroundings. Heat loss depends upon number of factors like insulation thickness, ambient temperature,
wind speed etc. This article shows how to calculate heat loss from an insulated pipe and a bare pipe to surroundings.
Example
A 3″ Carbon steel pipe is carrying hot oil at 180°C and insulated with 50 mm thick calcium silicate insulation. Insulation is
cladded with a sheet with surface emissivity of 0.9. Ambient temperature is 28°C and wind velocity is 3.5 m/s. Calculate
surface temperature and heat loss from insulated and bare pipe.
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4/14/2018 Heat Loss from Insulated Pipe – ChE Guide
where, kPIPE, kINSULATION are thermal conductivity of pipe and insulation. hin is heat transfer coe icient for fluid flowing
in pipe and hair is heat transfer coe icient due to air flowing outside the pipe. The first two terms of denominator in
above equation are generally smaller compared to remaining terms and can be neglected. For this example first term
due to pipe fluid is ignored.
Estimate thermodynamic properties of air like thermal conductivity (k), viscosity (μ), expansion coe icient (β =
1/t_average), air density (ρ), kinematic viscosity (ν), specific heat (Cp) and thermal di usivity (α) at average air film
temperature. These properties are available in literature in form of tables, these can be fitted into a polynomial form
using excel’s LINEST function. Reynolds’s number (Re), Prandtl number (Pr) and Rayleigh number (Ra) are calculated
based on above properties.
h_radiation
Heat transfer coe icient due to radiation is calculated using following relation.
where σ is Stefan Boltzmann coe icient and ε is emissivity for cladded surface.
h_convection
Convective heat transfer coe icient comprises of forced and free convection. Forced convection can be modeled
based on correlation by Churchill and Bernstein.
h_forced = Nu.k_air / D3
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h_free = Nu.k_air / D3
Combined heat transfer coe icient due to forced and free convection is calculated using following relation.
h_convection = Nu_combined.k_air / D3
Q = (t_operating - t_ambient)/r_overall
Above steps are repeated with these new estimates till there is negligible di erence in temperature.
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HeatLoss = πD3 Q
Bare Pipe
For heat loss from bare pipe all above steps are repeated with resistance due to insulation not considered.
For this example surface temperature and heat loss are as following.
Hidrotete says:
CheGuide says:
thank you.
Tom
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CheGuide says:
Regards
Tom
JUNG says:
CheGuide says:
Xiaoqi says:
Thank you
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4/14/2018 Heat Loss from Insulated Pipe – ChE Guide
CheGuide says:
Xiaoqi says:
If ε is emissivity for cladded surface. Then I think the equation should be like this:
Learn more
In this equation, we calculate the radiation heat transferring between cladding surface and the ambient.
Thanks
CheGuide says:
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WHAT IS THE DENSITY OF MINERAL WOOL IN THE THE HEAT LOSS CALCULATOR? PLEASE DO REPLY.
CheGuide says:
CheGuide says:
CheGuide says:
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July 9, 2016 at 5:14 pm (https://cheguide.com/2015/12/heat-loss-from-insulated-pipe/#comment-1646)
sir also clarify the unit of heat loss BTU/h/ used in the calculator…that it BTU/h/ or BTU/h/ sq.
CheGuide says:
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Humberto says:
Heat Losses di er a little bit from the Website counterpart. Is it due to the Wind Speed? If so, is there a
standard wind speed you use for the website calcs?
Thanks!
A says:
Andrew says:
CheGuide says:
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Bernardo says:
Sharan says:
Sharan says:
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