- Ambient to 600C in 10 seconds
- No Combustion Byproducts
- Existing Heat Exchange Can Stay
- Industry Leading Technology
- Completely Custom
Wind Tunnel
Tutco SureHeat designed and built two powerful electric heaters to replace the gas fired heaters currently being used in a wind tunnel application.
The client was looking to replace gas with electric to remove combustion byproducts and remove the need for a heat exchanger.
Two major heating challenges:
- Size: At over a megawatt each, these are going to be larger heaters.
- Ramp Rate: We’re heating from ambient to 600C in 10 seconds. We used to talk about 200F/second as a fast ramp rate. This is going beyond that.
Why are we replacing gas with electric?
There are two primary reasons.
- Gas heaters do not turn on/off and warm up with the same efficiency and rapidness. These extreme high temperature applications are largely for R&D research projects. Electric heaters have many advantages that researchers benefit from including the ability to ramp up the temperature of the air stream very quickly.
- Gas heaters put undesirable byproducts into the air stream. Burn a gas and you turn it into carbon dioxide and water vapor. A few other things burn that are not too attractive. If you’re running a sensitive test then you probably don’t want those contaminants in your airstream. You can use a heat exchange but then that represents another barrier to rapid temperature ramp. If your test can’t accept the products of combustion and you need a rapid temperature ramp then gas is not for you.
Gas heaters have pretty much one major advantage over electric, the cost of the fuel. The R&D researcher is less concerned with heater operating cost. They are typically doing something new that requires a future capability. It’s going to be something related to temperature, size and/or pressure. In this particular case, the client needed a very fast ramp rate. It wasn’t possible for them to get rid of the heat exchanging process and that was a barrier to faster ramp rates with gas.
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Temperature Range
Tutco SureHeat open coil electric air heaters can produce up to 1652°F (900°C) in standard designs and 1922°F (1050°C) in
custom designs.
Pressure Ratings
Typical electric heaters can withstand up to 600psi (40 bar) standard and greater than 1100 psi (75 Bar) in custom designs
International
Requirements:
Pressure Equipment Directive (PED) certification
Special control requirements
On-site startup assistance or training
Sizing & Selection
A simple formula for sizing the heater power (kilowatts) is given by: kW = SCFM x (Delta T)/3000, where SCFM is the mass flow rate in standard cubic feet per minute, and the Delta T is given in degrees Fahrenheit across the heater.
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