The article presents the results of surveys to assess the attractiveness of centralized heat supply systems in comparison with other heat sources. The heat source is an important element of the heat supply system which determines heating costs, comfort and environmental impact. The decision on the choice of the type of heat supply system is usually made by the investor or designer. Sometimes the equipment supplier or contractor has a part in this decision. The choice can be influenced by many different factors, also resulting from the specific location of the building. This is only partly determined by local law in the form of a local spatial development plan. the technical conditions (i.e. availability of heating or gas network), economic and financial, as well as much more subjective factors, such as the designer’s or contractor’s preference are also important. Aversion to district heating is growing, even when there are favorable conditions and the possibility of connecting the building to the heating network. Instead, a gas boiler or electrically powered heat pump is selected. This raises the question of whether such decisions are right and how they can be justified. As a research method, surveys were used, which were conducted among people who already have or will have an impact on design and investment decisions in the near future. The obtained results confirmed a large interest in district heating, appreciating their advantages in comparison with other methods of heat generation. The respondents also had the disadvantages that may lead to the use of an alternative methods of heat supplying in mind.

In the paper, the results of numerical simulations of the steam flow in a shell and tube heat exchanger are presented. The efficiency of different models of turbulence was tested. In numerical calculations the following turbulence models were used: k-ε, RNG k-ε, Wilcox k-ω, Chen-Kim k-ε, and Lam-Bremhorst k-ε. Numerical analysis of the steam flow was carried out assuming that the flow at the inlet section of the heat exchanger were divided into three parts. The angle of steam flow at inlet section was determined individually in order to obtain the best configuration of entry vanes and hence improve the heat exchanger construction. Results of numerical studies were verified experimentally for a real heat exchanger. The modification of the inlet flow direction according to theoretical considerations causes the increase of thermal power of a heat exchanger of about 14%.

Plate fin-tube heat exchangers fins are bonded with tubes by means of brazing or by mechanical expansion of tubes. Various errors made in the process of expansion can result in formation of an air gap between tube and fin. A number of numerical simulations was carried out for symmetric section of plate fin-tube heat exchanger to study the influence of air gap on heat transfer in forced convection conditions. Different locations of air gap spanning 1/2 circumference of the tube were considered, relatively to air flow direction. Inlet velocities were a variable parameter in the simulations (1– 5 m/s). Velocity and temperature fields for cases with air gap were compared with cases without it (ideal thermal contact). For the case of gap in the back of the tube (in recirculation zone) the lowest reduction (relatively to the case without gap) of heat transfer rate was obtained (average of 11%). The worst performance was obtained for the gap in the front (reduction relatively to full thermal contact in the average of 16%).

In order to provide sufficient cooling capacity for working and heading faces of the coal mine, chilled water is often transported a long distance along pipelines in deep mine, which inevitably results in its temperature rising owing to heat transfer through pipe wall and the friction heat for flow resistance. Through theoretical models for temperature increasing of the chilled water were built. It is pointed out that the temperature rising of the chilled water should be considered as a result of the synergy effects of the heat transfer and the friction heat, but theoretical analysis shows that within engineering permitting error range, the temperature increasing can be regarded as the sum caused by heat transfer and fraction heat respectively, and the calculation is simplified. The calculation analysis of the above two methods was made by taking two type of pipe whose diameters are De273 × 7 mm and De377 × 10 mm, with 15 km length in coal mine as an example, which shows that the error between the two methods is not over 0.04°C within the allowable error range. Aims at the commonly used chilled water diameter pipe, it is proposed that if the specific frictional head loss is limited between 100 Pa/m and 400 Pa/m, the proportion of the frictional temperature rising is about 24%~81% of the total, and it will increase with high flow velocity and the thin of the pipe. As a result, the friction temperature rising must not be ignored and should be paid enough attention in calculation of the chilled water temperature rising along pipe.

This paper presents the methodology for determining thermal strains and stresses during heating the charge in a rotary furnace. The calculations were made with the original software, which uses the finite element method. The heat transfer boundary conditions used for computing were verified on the basis of industrial tests. Good compatibility between the experimental data and numerical calculations was obtained. The possibility of the material cracking occurrence was checked for a set exhaust gas temperature distribution on the furnace length. As a result, it was possible to develop steel heating curves characterized by short process times.

Heat pipes, as passive elements show a high level of reliability when taking heat away and they can take away heat flows having a significantly higher density than systems with forced convection. A heat pipe is a hermetically closed duct, filled with working fluid. Transport of heat in heat pipes is procured by the change of state of the working fluid from liquid state to steam and vice versa and depends on the hydrodynamic and heat processes in the pipe. This study have been focused on observing the impact these processes have on the heat process, the transport of heat within the heat pipe with the help of thermovision. The experiment is oriented at scanning the changes in the surface temperatures of the basic structural types of capillary heat pipes in vertical position.

The paper presents the algorithms for a flue gas/water waste-heat exchanger with and without condensation of water vapour contained in flue gas with experimental validation of theoretical results. The algorithms were used for calculations of the area of a heat exchanger using waste heat from a pulverised brown coal fired steam boiler operating in a power unit with a capacity of 900 MWe. In calculation of the condensing part, the calculation results obtained with two algorithms were compared (Colburn-Hobler and VDI algorithms). The VDI algorithm allowed to take into account the condensation of water vapour for flue gas temperatures above the temperature of the water dew point. Thanks to this, it was possible to calculate more accurately the required heat transfer area, which resulted in its reduction by 19 %. In addition, the influence of the mass transfer on the heat transfer area was taken into account, which contributed to a further reduction in the calculated size of the heat exchanger - in total by 28% as compared with the Colburn-Hobler algorithm. The presented VDI algorithm was used to design a 312 kW pilot-scale condensing heat exchanger installed in PGE Belchatow power plant. Obtained experimental results are in a good agreement with calculated values.

Thermodynamics deals with irreversible transformations of substances. Every thermodynamic property of a substance, as a function of two parameters describing its state, can be illustrated as a simply connected manifold. The term manifold stands for the Methods of Geometrical Representation of Thermodynamic Properties of Substances by Means of Surfaces. Generally, every transformation of a substance changes its energy (or enthalpy) by heat transfer and work done on it. All such changes (transformations) are considered to be irreversible and can be described using appropriate manifolds. Studies show that every transformation is associated with the degradation of energy. Such relations (between heat, work and other forms of energy or enthalpy) can be described by the Pfaff formulas and their integrations.

This article discusses the issue of irreversible energy degradation in heat transfer between two fluids. Irreversible heat transfer between separated fluids most often occurs through surface heat exchangers. All such processes are determined by convective heat transfer in thermal boundary layers and conduction through the wall. Consequently, entropy changes of fluids in heat and mass transfer can be observed in these layers. While the entropy rate of the heating fluid is negative and that of the heated medium is positive, the sum of entropy changes of all substances involved in the heat transfer process is always positive. These sums, known as entropy increase (entropy generation), can be interpreted as the measure of irreversible degradation of energy in heat transfer processes. The consequence of this degradation is that an arbitrary engine powered by the degraded (lower-temperature) heat flux will operate at a lower efficiency. The significance of this discussion relates especially to cases in power plants and cooling systems where surface heat exchangers are used. In the discussion proposed is the entropy increase as a criterion of irreversible energy degradation in heat transfer. Such introduced measure of effectiveness leads to an analysis of local overall heat transfer coefficient optimization on the cone-shaped manifold.

The paper presents the solution to a problem of determining the heat flux density and the heat transfer coefficient, on the basis of temperature measurement at three locations in the flat sensor, with the assumption that the heat conductivity of the sensor material is temperature dependent. Three different methods for determining the heat flux and heat transfer coefficient, with their practical applications, are presented. The uncertainties in the determined values are also estimated.

In the paper a heating system with a vapour compressor heat pump and vertical U-tube ground heat exchanger for small residential house is considered. A mathematical model of the system: heated object - vapour compressor heat pump - ground heat exchanger is presented shortly. The system investigated is equipped, apart from the heat pump, with the additional conventional source of heat. The processes taking place in the analyzed system are of unsteady character. The model consists of three elements; the first containing the calculation model of the space to be heated, the second - the vertical U-tube ground heat exchanger with the adjoining area of the ground. The equations for the elements of vapour compressor heat pump form the third element of the general model. The period of one heating season is taken into consideration. The results of calculations for two variants of the ground heat exchanger are presented and compared. These results concern variable in time parameters at particular points of the system and energy consumption during the heating season. This paper presents the mutual influence of the ground heat exchanger subsystem, elements of vapour compressor heat pump and heated space.

Experimental investigation of natural convection heat transfer in heated vertical tubes dissipating heat from the internal surface is presented. The test section is electrically heated and constant wall heat flux is maintained both circumferentially and axially. Four different test sections are taken having 45 mm internal diameter and 3.8 mm thickness. The length of the test sections are 450 mm, 550 mm, 700 mm and 850 mm. Ratios of length to diameter of the test sections are taken as 10, 12.22, 15.56, and 18.89. Wall heat fluxes are maintained at 250–3341 W/m2. Experiments are also conducted on channels with internal rings of rectangular section placed at various distances. Thickness of the rings are taken as 4 mm, 6 mm, and 8 mm. The step size of the rings varies from 75 mm to 283.3 mm. The nondimensional ring spacing, expressed as the ratios of step size to diameter, are taken from 1.67 to 6.29 and the non-dimensional ring thickness, expressed as the ratios of ring thickness to diameter are taken from 0.089 to 0.178. The ratios of ring spacing to its thickness are taken as 9.375 to 70.82. The effects of various parameters such as length to diameter ratio, wall heat flux, ring thickness and ring spacing on local steady-state heat transfer behavior are observed. From the experimental data a correlation is developed for average Nusselt number and modified Rayleigh number. Another correlation is also developed for modified Rayleigh number and modified Reynolds number. These correlations can predict the data accurately within ±10% error.

In the paper presented are studies on the investigation of the capillary forces effect induced in the porous structure of a loop heat pipe using water and ethanol ad test fluids. The potential application of such effect is for example in the evaporator of the domestic micro-CHP unit, where the reduction of pumping power could be obtained. Preliminary analysis of the results indicates water as having the best potential for developing the capillary effect.