The study of a fiberglass furnace flue air pollutants and the economical saving from the application of a heat recovery system In a Fiberglass Factory

The fiberglass furnace flue discharges not only a variety of air pollutants but also a tremendous amount of heat. Its’ high discharged air temperature, limits the application of a cost effective dust collector. The application of a heat recovery system seems not only to make it possible for application of a cost effective dust collector but also may reduce heating costs considerably. In the present study, the air pollutants discharged from a fiberglass furnace flue were measured and evaluated. In the next step, the reduced fuel and social costs were estimated if a proposed heat recovery system was applied. For this purpose, five air pollutants including CO, CO2, NO, NO2, NOx, and air velocity were measure using TESTO 350XL. Particulate matter (PM) was also monitored using TCR TECORA ISO TRACK, all through direct readings. Temperature was monitored automatically through installed instrumentation at the furnace control room. More than nine hundred thousand air temperature readings were screened to select 2043 reliable readings. The recovered heat was estimated using the measured data. Direct and indirect savings from the recovered heat was predicted using the Environmental software. The results revealed that the average concentration of CO, NOx, and PM were respectively 1.45, 1.38 and 6.477 times higher than environmental permissible limits. The recovered heat was equivalent to almost 1500 million cubic meters of natural gas saving per year which costs 24.4 million US$. The extraction of statistic data and research hypothesis test was done by Mini Tab 14 software. The data of mean society examination (with determined variance) and mean of two societies and also probability plot used for contaminant changes forecast in the next years.