CFD Analysis of Regenerative Chambers for Energy Efficiency Improvement in Glass Production Plants

The overall efficiency of a regenerative chamber for a glass furnace mainly relies on the thermo-fluid dynamics of air and waste gas alternatively flowing through stacks of refractory bricks (checkers) determining the heat recovery. A numerical approach could effectively support the design strategies in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the current technology and hopefully suggest new perspectives of improvement. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) scheme for the regenerator is proposed, where the real geometry of the solid phase is modelled as a porous solid phase exchanging heat with the gas stream. Satisfactory data fitting proved the reliability of the present approach, whose applications are proposed in the last section of this study, to confirm how such a CFD modelling could be helpful in improving the overall energy efficiency of the regeneration chamber.