Incremental Countercurrent (ICC) Regenerative Heat Exchangers

Two new types of regenerative heat exchanger designs using incremental counter-current (ICC) solid-fluid contact method will be presented. One type is a moving bed heat exchanger, another type is a rotary simulated moving bed heat exchanger. Both types enable incremental renewal and countercurrent (ICC) flows of solid beds vs. fluid streams. Based on thermal calculations, it is determined that those new designs could reduce solid heat storge medium weight and increase air preheater efficiency from 85% to 90-95% in comparison with the state-of-the-art technologies. An ICC heat exchanger has additional advantages over a rotary wheel heat exchanger in terms of radial and circumferential/bypass leakages that are driven by pressure differences. The total lengths of both the radial and circumferential leaking boundary of an ICC heat exchanger are shorter than that of a same sized rotary wheel heat exchanger. In general, an ICC heat exchanger could be smaller than a rotary wheel heat exchanger, which would further reduce the leaking boundary length.