The Partial Carbon Footprint of Plate Type Heat Exchanger in Operation

The partial carbon footprint of use stage accounts for 60% -95% of the whole life cycle for products with long life and high energy consumption, such as boiler, car. While the carbon footprint is difficult for heat exchanger because of its obscure and indirect power consumption during operation. The flow work loss is the difference of fluid flow mechanical work between inlet and outlet of heat exchanger, and is composed of volumetric flow rate, pressure drop and time period. The flow work loss is proposed to account the carbon emission by consumed electric power or pressured steam. The qualification method is justified by the experimental data of a 1.6 ton plate type heat exchanger. The heat exchanger consumes 1.01 kW for hot fluid, 1.07 kW for cold fluid under the standard test condition; the total electrical consumed power is 2.09 kW by the flow work loss per second. Its carbon emission of 3 years of service life is 163.98 tCO<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> and its electrical work consumed of heat exchanger is 93518 kWh. Its amount of carbon emission is also about 216 times of that of the averaged 0.75884 tCO<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> per ton of air coolers during manufacturing.