Advanced solutions to improve heat recovery from wastewater in a double heat exchanger

Abstract

Reducing energy consumption and CO2 footprint in existing buildings without requiring extensive construction work is one of the biggest challenges facing the globe today. Although heating contributes for the majority of energy use in buildings, residential hot water demand is also relatively high, particularly when daily usage is high and especially for certain applications. The use of technologies that recover energy from sources other than fossil fuels to heat water has grown crucial, and one such technology involves recovering thermal energy from wastewater. Typically, heat recovery from wastewater is made to collect any remaining energy from the hot drainage water, and this energy is then applied to heat pumps or to warm up incoming cold water. The paper presents numerical simulations using a SST k-ω turbulence model in order to compare a regular geometry of heat exchanger with a helicoidal one. The second one provides a more turbulent flow that allows an intensification of the outer flow, thus allowing the enhancement of the heat transfer from the inner heated flow to the outer flow.