Department of Chemical Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay

CL405 (RKM) Process Equipment Selection 2019-2020

MINI PROJECT II
(Due on September 13, 2019)
All submissions in class only. No late submissions will be permitted

Important Note: Use any source of information except another person. Please note that
use of any commercial process simulator is strictly prohibited and you must carry out all
the calculations by yourself. Use of MATLAB (or any other programming environment)
is encouraged provided the final source code is submitted in addition to the hardcopy
report.

Part-A: Setting up a Program for Adiabatic Flame Temperature Calculation &

HHV Calculation for Gas Fired Process Heaters

In a refinery, there are several gases (called the Refinery Fuel Gases) which can be used
for fuel purposes in furnaces. For meaningful heat transfer calculations in furnaces, one
needs to determine the adiabatic flame temperature of the chosen fuel gas for a given air
to fuel ratio. Since the heat capacities of constituents of fuel gas, air, and flue gas are
strongly dependent on temperature, one must first gather the required correlations for
heat capacities as a function of temperature. In addition, the heat of combustion/reaction
data also needs to be retrieved from the literature. In a particular case, the following
Refinery Fuel Gases are the likely fuels under consideration:

In the above table, C1, C2, C3, and C4 represent four different refinery fuel gases that
can be used as fuels in furnaces. The Natural Gas (NG), of course, is the regular fuel.
Assuming that the refinery fuel gases (and also the NG) are available at standard
conditions of 25oC and 1 bar pressure, you have been asked to calculate the HHV (Higher
Heating Value) and adiabatic flame temperature for the Refinery Fuel Gas C1 & the
Natural Gas (NG) in the table for a case of 10% excess air. Compile all the required
physical and thermodynamic data for this purpose and set up equations to carry out the
calculations as required. Note that these calculations are iterative and therefore writing
a computer program will help for obtaining a numerical solution.

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 Part-B: Interchangeability of Fuels in Fired Process Heaters

One of the criteria to check the interchangeability of fuel to a fired furnace is that of
Wobbe Index. The Wobbe Index (or Wobbe number) is a parameter used in evaluating the
interchangeability of gaseous fuels in combustion applications. It is defined as the fuel’s
Higher Heating Value (HHV) divided by the square root of its specific gravity.

Using the concept of Wobbe Index, check the interchangeability of Refinery Fuel Gas C1
with the Natural Gas fuel in PART-A. The specific gravity of Refinery Fuel Gas C1 is
0.65 and that of Natural Gas fuel in PART-A is 0.58. Report the calculated Wobbe
Indices in your report for comparison.

Items for Submission

A well-structured PROJECT REPORT with all formulae used and properly defined units.
Your report must include all detailed calculations carried out by you. The property data
and its references should also be included. If calculations are done by a computer
program, a source code must be submitted as part of your report.

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