CEREXPRO · Ceramic Heat exchangers with enhanced materials properties

Heat recovery at a high temperature level is essential in industrial thermal processing. The use of ceramic materials yields higher temperatures and subsequently a higher efficiency. The present project aims to develop a new generation of ceramic heat exchangers for high temperature heat recovery with the target of significantly reducing the size and weight as well as also the price of such components by simplifying the manufacturing process and allowing a higher flexibility in the heat exchanger geometry. The use of precursors/template materials taken from the textile industries and a subsequent ceramic conversion is proposed as the main technological path for reaching the above objectives. Although this principal option is not new, there are no development efforts known, to utilize such a technological approach for industrial high temperature heat exchangers. The proposed route will lead to an increase in freedom of the geometric design at low costs for shaping. The development/refinement of the conversion process for such materials into a thermal-shock resistant gas-tight ceramic (e.g. silicon infiltrated silicon carbide) and the multi-objective optimization in terms of size, geometry, material and production costs is the major challenge of the proposed project. A complete ceramic heat exchanger component shaped by textile technologies is targeted. The combination/junction of existing robust ceramic components already applied in industrial furnaces, like silicon infiltrated SiC tubes, with compatible ceramic heat enhancement elements, built through the textile technology based manufacturing process, allows a robust construction in terms of application safety as an intermediate technology development step. At the same time a significant size reduction or increase of the heat recovery level can be achieved due to the higher heat transfer by the fine shaped and geometrically flexible heat enhancement elements.