Effect of Lattice Setting Density on Fluid Flow and Convective Heat Transfer Characteristics of Bricks in Tunnel Kilns

This paper reports the effect of setting density on flow uniformity, pressure drop, pumping power, and convective heat transfer coefficients (CHTCs). High-density setting (HDS) comprises 768 bricks, and low-density setting (LDS) contains 512 bricks are tested for different inlet air velocities using both local and average approaches. The investigation is carried out using a 3D-computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model with k–ω turbulence model. Both settings are validated against experimental data reported in the literature with errors less than 1.9% for pressure drop and −1.0% for brick surface temperature. The reported results indicated that the LDS has distinct benefits over the HDS as it enhances the flow uniformity, particularly in the stack channels. Also, LDS attains lower pressure drop, pumping power, and firing time than HDS by 45.93%, 50%, and 35%, respectively. In addition, LDS produces larger CHTCs, rates of heat transfer for individual bricks, and the ratio of heat transfer to pumping power than HDS by 24.53%, 35%, and 34%, respectively. Moreover, LDS produces more homogenous heating of the setting bricks than HDS as the maximum difference of CHTCs between bricks is about 4.39% for LDS and 19.62% for HDS. The best performance of the firing process is accomplished at low inlet air velocity (3 m/s), whereas the highest productivity is achieved at high inlet air velocity (9 m/s).