Biomethane production from renewable residues with anaerobic digestion gains increasing attention as a crucial alternative to petroleum fuels. It has been vigorously developed, but the large amounts of subsidy from the government indicate that the process efficiency needs to be further improved. For biomethane production, on the one hand, a great amount of heat needs to be used for heating the feeding slurry, sanitation of slurry, and maintaining the temperature in the large-scale reactors. On the other hand, a large amount of thermophilic effluent slurries brings a huge amount of waste heat, which can be recovered. This makes it important to study how to increase production by improving the thermal efficiency of biogas plants with novel heat exchangers. 

The working fluids in the biogas plants are the non-Newtonian and high-viscous slurries, and the conventional heat exchangers in biogas plants always show much lower performance compared to those in other industries. Normally, the slurries in the biogas plant consist of different substrates, including straw, manure, food waste, municipal sludge, and their mixtures, and various factors such as the amount and type of solids, particle size, shear rate, and temperature impact the rheological properties of the slurries, which makes the complexity in the rheological properties and the difficulty in developing novel heat exchangers.

The development of heat exchangers calls for the rheological properties of slurries. However, to the best of our knowledge, only the rheology of manure slurry was systematically determined and modeled considering the effect of temperature. The lack of the rheological properties of slurries further hinders the design and development of novel geometries to enhance the heat transfer of the slurries. Correspondingly, the quantitative contribution and potential of the waste-heat recovery from the slurries to production using the enhanced geometry remain unclear. 

    In this thesis work, to design novel geometry with heat-transfer enhancement for different slurries and determine its potential in thermal cycles in the full-scale biogas plants, firstly, the temperature-dependent rheological properties of the slurries, including the corn straw, food waste, and mixed slurries, were tested and modeled. It was found that these slurries possess strong shear-thinning behavior, the temperature has a significant impact on their dynamic viscosity, and the power-law model combined with the Arrhenius equation can describe the rheology well.

    Subsequently, with the reliable models of the rheological properties as the key input,  Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations were conducted to screen different twisted geometries, determine the heat-transfer performance, and reveal the mechanism of the heat-transfer enhancement. Lab- and pilot-scale experiments were also conducted to validate the numerical results. The twisted hexagonal tubes show a positive enhancement factor up to 2.6 compared to normal heat exchangers in a wide range of operating conditions. The continuous and strong near-wall shear effect is the intrinsic reason for achieving a significant heat-transfer enhancement in the twisted hexagonal tubes. Moreover, the generalized engineering equations for predicting the effective shear rate and heat-transfer performance with measurable parameters were established and verified with both numerical and experimental results.

    Finally, the twisted-hexagonal-tube heat exchange was integrated with complete thermal cycles, including waste-heat recovery and external heating processes in the biogas plant, and the potential of increased production and profits were modeled and analyzed combined with the practical operating conditions in a full-scale biogas plant. It was found that for the waste-heat recovery using the twisted hexagonal tubes, the net raw biogas production can increase by up to 17.0 %, and for the external heating process, the increased profit equivalent to 39 % of total production can be achieved owing to energy conservation in external heating using the twisted-hexagonal-tube heat exchangers for a full-scale biogas plant. 

Background: The use of food waste as feedstock shows high production of biogas via anaerobic digestion, but requires efficient heat transfer in food waste slurry at heating and cooling processes. The lack of rheological properties hampered the research on the heat-transfer process for food waste slurry. Referentially, the twisted hexagonal and elliptical rubes have been proved as the optimal enhanced geometry for heat transfer of medium viscous slurries with non-Newtonian behavior and Newtonian fluids, respectively. It remains unknown whether improvements can be achieved by using twisted geometries in combination with food waste slurry in processes including heating and cooling.

Results: Food waste slurry was observed to exhibit highly viscous, significant temperature-dependence, and strongly shear-thinning rheological characteristics. Experiments confirmed the heat-transfer enhancement of twisted hexagonal tubes for food waste slurry and validated the computational fluid dynamics-based simulations with an average deviation of 14.2%. Twisted hexagonal tubes were observed to be more effective at low-temperature differences and possess an enhancement factor of up to 2.75; while twisted elliptical tubes only exhibited limited heat-transfer enhancement at high Reynolds numbers. The heat-transfer enhancement achieved by twisted hexagonal tubes was attributed to the low dynamic viscosity in the boundary layer induced by the strong and continuous shear effect near the walls of the tube.

Conclusions: This study determined the rheological properties of food waste slurry, confirmed the heat-transfer enhancement of the twisted hexagonal tubes experimentally and numerically, and revealed the mechanism of heat-transfer enhancement based on shear rate distributions.

The low mass transfer rate in porous materials hinders the use of adsorbed natural gas as vehicle fuel. Fundamentally, the mass transfer rate depends on the structures of the adsorbents and the operating conditions. Therefore, in this study, the effects of adsorbent (activated carbons) structure and operating conditions on the mass transfer rate of methane (main component of natural gas) were investigated quantitatively, providing a theoretical basis for the synthesis of efficient adsorbent materials. By performing Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations and utilizing a non-equilibrium thermodynamics linearization transfer model, the mass transfer behavior of methane in porous carbon materials was quantitatively evaluated, specifically focusing on the material structure, operating conditions, and feasibility of using natural gas as vehicle fuel. The proposed linear non-equilibrium thermodynamics mass transfer model is applicable to interfacial gas species and provides a valuable tool for gas separation.

Super-hydrophobic coatings have great application potential in the fields of surface self-cleaning, fluid drag reduction, anti-fog and anti-icing, and microfluidic control. The controls of morphologies for the super-hydrophobic coating inside a circular tube have not been investigated. In this paper, the polydopamine (PDA) was coated on the inner wall of stainless-steel cylinder by electrochemical deposition under different values of shear stress, and n-dodecyl mercaptan (NDM) was used to modify the PDA surface. This PDA/NDM coating shows super-hydrophobic behavior. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), contact angle tester (CA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and X-ray diffraction tester (XRD) were used to analyze the characterization of the coating. The results show that PDA deposition can be divided into two stages under the effect of shear stress. The first stage is the agglomeration of PDA particles on the stainless steel substrate. The second stage is PDA in-situ growth based on PDA particles aggregate, and the growth process is controlled by shear stress. When the shear stress is 1.85 mPa, the coating surface shows coral shaped balls with about 15—24 μm. When the shear stress is 7.41 mPa, the coating surface has a flaky structure with a particle size of about 1—4 μm. The wetting angles of the prepared PDA/NDM coating are greater than 150°, belongs to super-hydrophobic properties. And the coating has good chemical stability and heat resistance wear resistance and corrosion resistance. The work has certain guiding for the regulation and control of the surface nano/microstructure during the preparation of the inner surface coating of the pipe.

Heat-transfer enhancement in manure slurry is crucial for increasing the efficiency and production of biogas during anaerobic digestion in biogas plants. In this study, a novel heat exchanger with an optimal twisted geometry was developed based on the numerical screening of the twisted tubes with equilateral polygons, and experiments were conducted to validate the numerical results. It was observed that the SST k-ω model is more efficient than other turbulence models in representing the heat transfer performance of the twisted tubes, and the numerical model with a thermostatic wall can be used to reliably screen the twisted geometries. The twisted hexagonal tube has the optimal geometry, with enhancement capability of up to 1.4 times compared to that of the circular tube. The formation of high continuity regions with relatively strong heat-transfer rates along the heat-exchange wall is the main reason for the high performance during heat transfer. The external heating process was integrated in a full-scale biogas plant, and the model and algorithm were developed and validated with additional experiments to describe the overall performance of both conventional and screened optimal geometries under different conditions. It was observed that a profit equivalent to 39% of total production for a large-scale biogas plant can be achieved owing to energy conservation in external heating with the twisted hexagonal tubes.

Heat-transfer geometries that enhance heat transfer performance for slurries increase the net raw biogas production in the bio-methane process. In this study, the precise temperature-dependent rheologies of corn straw slurry with 6 and 8% total solid were determined, collected, and modeled to conduct a numerical simulation via CFD, the first instance of such research. Subsequently, the reliability of the numerical results was verified with heat-transfer experiments. The heat-transfer performances of the circular, twisted square and twisted hexagonal tubes were estimated numerically, ultimately showing that the twisted hexagonal tube performed optimally with an enhancement factor of up to 2.0 in the turbulent region, compared to the circular tube. Based on the numerical results, the mechanism of heat-transfer enhancement was revealed, showing balanced radial mixing and the near-wall shear effect that leads to a strong and continuous shear rate under a considerable radial-flow intensity. An engineering equation was obtained for the performance evaluation, and the waste-heat recovery from corn straw slurry was analyzed, showing the twisted hexagonal tube can increase the net raw biogas production by up to 17.0% compared to the circular tube.

Biogas is one of the most crucial renewable energy and achieving high-efficient heat exchangers is the key to improve its production. In this study, the effect of pulsating flow on heat transfer in a twisted hexagonal tube with manure slurry was investigated for the first time by using computational fluid dynamics CFD. The performances of pulsating flows were simulated under different conditions, including the inlet velocity, frequency, and amplitude of pulsating flow in the twisted hexagonal tube with different torques. Pressure drops at different frequencies were further investigated. Moreover, the mechanism of heat-transfer enhancement was revealed with the evolution of the heat-transfer coefficient over time. It was found the pulsating flow achieves an 18.9% enhancement at low torque.

Agitation power consumption (P) in the anaerobic digestion of biogas plants is a major consumer of electric energy. To reduce P by adjusting the rheological properties, in this work, the rheological properties of the corn-straw slurry were studied systematically considering the effects of TS, temperature and particle-size, and P was calculated based on the rheological behavior of the corn-straw slurry. The investigation shows that the corn-straw slurry is a non-Newtonian fluid and exhibit shear-thinning behavior, and the rheological properties can be well described with the power law model. The size-reduction is more effective compared to the option of temperature-increase to improve the agitation power efficiency, and the value of P can be reduced by up to 48.11 %. Since the size-reduction can also increase the methane yield, the reduction of the particle-size is a promising option to save P, especially at relatively high TSs and for the thermophilic AD process.

Heat transfer geometries with enhanced performance for the slurries with high viscosity can improve the net raw biogas production in bio-methane process. In this study, the rheological properties of different slurries were tested, correlated and implemented to computational fluid dynamics (CFD). CFD was then used to screen a new geometry based on the twisted tube combined with mechanism study, and experimental testing was conducted for verification. It shows that the twisted hexagonal tube (THT) has the highest performance. The mechanism for enhancing the heat transfer with THT was mainly due to the effective shear rate. Furthermore, the waste-heat recovery with the THT heat exchanger in biogas production was estimated quantitatively and compared with the normal heat exchanger and scraped-surface heat exchanger (SSHE). Compared to the normal heat exchanger, for THT, the increase of net raw biogas production δ_NRBP can be up to 17%, while it is only up to 8.53% for SSHE. Besides, the external heating up processes with THT and normal heat exchanger were studied to estimate the heating time for different temperature fluctuations and power requirements of boiler. It is found that the process with THT can save 25-38% heating time for the anaerobic reactor compared to the normal heat exchanger. Therefore, designed THT heat exchanger is promising, and the developed methods can also be beneficial for studying other heat transfer processes.

Agitation power consumption (P) in the anaerobic digestion of biogas plants is a major part of the electric energy consumption. To reduce P by adjusting the rheological properties, in this work, the rheological properties of corn straw slurry were studied systematically with the consideration of the effects of TS, temperature and particle sizes. The P was calculated based on the rheological behaviour of corn straw slurry. The investigation shows that the thermophilic digestion is effective only for the slurry with a relatively high TS. The size-reduction is more effective at higher TS compared to the option of increasing temperature in order to improve the agitation power efficiency, and the value of P can be reduced by up to 48.11 %. Since the size-reduction can also increase the methane yield, the adjustment of particle sizes is a promising option to save P, especially at higher TS.