Thermal Performance Analysis of a Newly Designed Circular Firewood Boiling Salt Stove

Different biomass stoves are introduced and distributed among people living in rural and urban areas, especially in developing countries. For salt crystal production in Thailand’s rural north-eastern area, open fire stoves are used in domestic and small productive activities. Their thermal efficiency is very low for converting heat into utilization energy. A new stove with a circular configuration was designed and constructed to consider its thermal efficiency and economics, which were compared with those from a traditional and an improved traditional stove. The obtained thermal efficiency of the newly designed stove was 14.77% higher than that of the improved stove and 81.45% higher than that of the traditional stove. For the same initial saline volume, the final amounts of salt crystals and salt flowers obtained from the newly designed stove was higher compared with those obtained from the improved stove and the traditional stove, respectively, resulting in a 69.25% shorter payback period

Comparison of the heat for rectangular and circle salt boiling stove in Ban Dung area, Udon Thani Province.

This research aims a study to compare the thermal parameter of the original (rectangular) and circle salt boiling stove by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) of the boiling salt process in Ban Dung area, Udon Thani province. The first study, the rectangular stove has U-shaped channel for heating flow through chimney that the stove size is 2.4 m of width, 6.0 m of long, 0.8 m of high and cross-sectional area of heating flue was 0.8 x 0.8 m2. The second study, the circle salt boiling stove has a similarly volume of the rectangular stove of 4.32 m3 and the diameter of 4.58 m. From the results of mathematical models by CFD found that the rectangular stove have the thermal efficiency, the highest fired temperature and the velocity outlet of hot air of 17.78%, 537.77oC and 4.862 m/s, respectively. Then, the circle stove have 24.59%, 758.32oC and 3.1424 m/s, respectively. it can be calculated the thermal efficiency reduce of the boiling salt production is 27.69%. Comparison between the rectangular and the circle salt boiling stove found that the circle stove have the thermal efficiency and heating flue more than the rectangular stove. It can reduce the cost of production and reduce the fuel consumption in the salt boiling process