A CFD investigation of conventional brick kilns

Abstract

Brick is the most important building material and brick kilns are a large source of environmental pollution. Most of the kilns used to produce the brick in Bangladesh are backdated and energy inefficient. These poorly performed brick kilns lead to high Green House Gas (GHG) emission and sub-standard brick quality. The objective of this paper is to analyze the brick making sectors of Bangladesh and to come up with a concrete recommendation for an energy efficient and environment friendly brick kiln. To evaluate the performance of these conventional kilns, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation approach is applied. CFD analysis helps to simulate the temperature profile of the brick kilns, the mass flow fractions of CO2 and NOx emissions at the outlet, and also the air velocity profile inside the kiln. Turbulence, Combustion and Radiation models are adopted to establish a realistic Tunnel kiln environment using ANSYS FLUENT. Using this software detailed analysis of tunnel kiln is done and a comparative analysis between FCK and Zigzag kiln is also presented in this paper.