Applied Thermal Engineering 125 (2017) 727–734

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Research Paper

A compact packing humidifier for the micro humid air turbine cycle:
Design method and experimental evaluation
Zhen Xu a,⇑, Yingchun Xie b, Yunhan Xiao c
a
College of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, China
b
College of Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China
c
Institute of Engineering Thermalphysics, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China

h i g h l i g h t s

A compact humidifier with ceramic foam packing is designed and built.

The performances of this humidifier are evaluated by experimental data.

Both the steady state and dynamic performances are analyzed.

This compact humidifier has a potential application in HAT cycle.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The purpose of this research is to develop a compact humidifier with novel ceramic foam corrugated
Received 14 January 2017 packing, which is conducive to the improvement of the flexibility of humid air turbine cycles, thus has
Revised 31 May 2017 a potential in commercial application. The packing size is calculated with an analytic model based on
Accepted 3 July 2017
the Merkel theory and energy effectiveness-NTU function. The simplified structures of the air and water
Available online 10 July 2017
distributors are proposed according to the special characteristics of packing. The evaluation of this
humidifier has been carried out by means of experimental data obtained from a mHAT system. Both
Keywords:
the steady state performance at off-design conditions and dynamic behavior at start-up process are pre-
Ceramic foam packing
Humidifier
sented and analyzed. At nominal condition, the humidifier shows a pinch of 12 °C and a relatively pres-
Humid air turbine sure loss of 0.59% operating pressure. With the load decreasing from 100% to 50%, the inlet and outlet
Dynamic performance fluid temperature as well as the outlet air humid ratio will all decrease, but the maximum decrement
is not more than 11%. Due to the great thermal capacitance, especially that of the water in its bottom sec-
tion, a relative slow response of the humidifier has been observed.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Over a long period of time, power generation technologies
based on nature gas-fired gas turbines have received more atten-
tion for its compactness, flexibility, low maintenance cost and
low emissions. Microturbines are very small gas turbines with out-
puts ranging from 30 kW to 300 kW [1]. They are considered to be
promising for distributed generation and combined heat and
power (CHP). However, the electric efficiency of them are still rel-
atively low (<30%) for the low turbine inlet temperature (<900 °C),
which causes a negative effect on theirs competitiveness to the
internal combustion engines (ICE). A possible solution to this prob-
lem is to use more advanced cycles for the microturbines. Accord-
⇑ Corresponding author at: College of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong
University, No. 17923, Jingshi Road, Jinan, Shandong Province 250061, China.
E-mail address: xuzhen77@163.com (Z. Xu).
ing to Jonsson and Yan, the humid air turbine (HAT) cycle had the
highest efficiency of all developed gas turbine cycles [4]. However,
the HAT layout cannot be explained directly to a microturbines
where the intercooling is not needed for the application of
single-stage radial compressor, and then some modifications are
required [5]. More recently, the thesis of optimal humidification
route for microturbines is also discussed by Paepe et al. [6]. In past
decade, converting the microturbine into micro humid air turbine
(mHAT), by equipped with a water circuit and a humidifier to
humidify the compressed air, had been experimentally verified
by a few authors [7–9].
The humidifier is the key component in mHAT cycle as well as
in HAT cycle. Several different types of devices have been proposed
in the literature. Dalili and Westermark [10] designed a tubular
humidifier which could humidify compressed air and recovery
heat from the flue gas in one device. A no-packing humidifier using
nozzles to inject water in the compressed air was investigated in

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2017.07.031
1359-4311/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
728 Z. Xu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 125 (2017) 727–734
Nomenclature
C heat capacity rate ratio
Cp specific heat at constant pressure (kJkg1K1)
m mass flow rate (kgm2s1)
h specific enthalpy (kJkg1)
H enthalpy of fluid (kJ)
HTU height of the gas-phase mass transfer unit (m)
M molecular weight (kgmol1)
NTU number of mass transfer unit
P pressure
R water/air mass flow ratio
T temperature (°C)
x humidity ratio (kgkg1 dry air)
our early work [11]. The contact area was provided by the water
droplets and the pressure drop could be decreased in this type of
device [12]. More attention was paid to the humidifiers with the
internal packing [13–15], which were most likely to be applied in
commercial HAT package for the uniform air-water contact area
and mature design method.
For the packing humidifier, the compactness is an extremely
important factor as well as the pressure drop. As is generally
known, increasing the gas-path pressure drop between the com-
pressor and the turbine has a negative effect on the overall cycle
efficiency [16]. However, few research results have been reported
about introducing a large volume in this path-way on the cycle
performance. According to several authors [17,18], the recuperator
thermal capacitance plays a critical role in the transient behavior of
microturbines. On the other hand, the volume capacitance can usu-
ally be ignored only when the gas turbines have relatively large
volume [19]. However, introducing an additional volume to the
microturbines indeed increases the risk of inducing compressor
deep surge especially during the emergency shutdown [20] and
has a impact on the transient behaviours of the system [21]. The
humidifiers are distinguished by introducing water into the com-
pressed air under the driving force of vapor pressure, so a large
air-water contact area is needed. Compared to the recuperators,
they have a significantly larger thermal and volume capacitance.
The impact of a volume on the shutdown and the transient behav-
ior of mHAT is discussed in Refs. [8,22]. Therefore, a compact
humidifier is beneficial to the flexibility, safe operation and
decreasing installation and management costs (small volume
should not be treated as a pressure vessel) of the mHAT.
In our recent work, a ceramic foam corrugated packing is devel-
oped and its heat and mass transfer performance is proved to be
superior to the traditional structured packing [23]. Based on this
novel packing, a compact humidifier is designed for the micro
humid air turbine in this research. The design method of the col-
umn size is developed from the Merkel theory and the energy
effectiveness-NTU model [24]. The structures of the air and the
water distributor are simplified thanks to the excellent dispersion
and wettability characteristics of the packing. The performances of
the humidifier are evaluated by the experiments, including the
steady state performances at design and off-design conditions
and the dynamic behaviors. This compact humidifier has a strong
application potential in the commercial HAT cycle.
2. Design method
2.1. Simulation of the mHAT
In order to calculate the required sizes of the humidifier, it is
necessary to provide the inlet and outlet conditions of the water
Subscripts
a air
da dry air
i inlet
id ideal amount
o outlet
v vapor
w water
Greek symbols
e energy based effectiveness
and the air. These conditions strongly depend on the pressure ratio
and the turbine inlet temperature of the gas turbine, that means
the energy and mass balance of the whole cycle should be ana-
lyzed. In our previous research, a mHAT test facility was developed
from a commercial recuperated microturbine (type TG80) made by
Bowman [9]. TG80 is a natural gas fired- engine with a single-stage
centrifugal compressor and single-stage radial inflow turbine.
Under full load condition, its output power is 80 kW and electrical
efficiency is 26%. In this system, the mHAT layout proposed in [5]
was used. The thermodynamic and emission performances at
full- and part- load were investigated at constant rotational speed,
and the impact of a aftercooler on mHAT was also evaluated by
experiments. The schematic of our mHAT is shown in Fig. 1. There
is no intercooler and water recovery in this system. An air-bleed
system is equipped after the compressor, i.e., a part of air will be
discharged in mHAT operation to match the air flow between the
compressor and the turbine. Moreover, an air bypass is provided
for evaluating the part flow mHAT cycle performance.
The parameters used to analyze the mHAT system are shown in
Table 1. For a given microturbine, an integrated humidification sys-
tem will bring several additional variables. Some constraint condi-
tions must be set to be able to manageably analyze the whole
system. These are minimum approach temperature in heat
exchangers, the inlet water temperature and the minimum differ-
ence between the air wet bulb temperature and the water temper-
ature (also be known as the pinch) in the humidifier [25]. In this
work, the inlet water temperature and the pinch are selected to
Fuel
Air
Combustor
Compressor Turbine
Air-bleed
Air bypass Recuperator
Air cooler Humidifier Economizer
Feed
Water water
Pump treatment
Fig. 1. Schematic of the mHAT based on a microturbine.
 Z. Xu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 125 (2017) 727–734 729

Table 1 dition, the calculated deviation of humidity ratio between ideal

Calculating parameters for the mHAT system. mixture gas assumption and real humid air model is less than
Parameter Value 1.6% [11]. Therefore, the former is used in this work:
Ambient condition 1.013 bar, 15 °C, 60% RH Mw Pv
Inlet air mass flow 0.73 kgs1 x¼  ð6Þ
Pressure ratio 4.3 Mda P  Pv
Compressor isentropic efficiency 75%
The height of the gas-phase mass transfer unit, HTU, indicates
Combustor efficiency 99.5%
Combustor pressure loss 4% the heat and mass transfer performance of the packing. A packing
Turbine inlet temperature 860 °C with the larger specific surface area usually has a higher HTU value.
Turbine isentropic efficiency 79% In practice, the HTU is determined empirically for a special packing
Air cooler pressure loss 0.5% and application. In this work, a silicon carbide (SiC) ceramic foam
Humidifier pressure loss 1%
corrugated packing (named FSC-1) is selected, as illustrated in
Economizer pressure loss 0.5%
Recuperator pressure loss 3% Fig. 2. The HTU data of FSC-1 for the air-water system is published
with the same temperature and pressure level as the microturbines
[23]. In order to correct the mass flow rate difference between the
be at least 10 °C lower than the saturation temperature corre- design and the test condition, these are converted into [28]:
sponding to the air pressure and 4 °C, respectively.  0 0:35  0:39
mda mw
HTU ¼ HTU 0  ð7Þ
mda m0w
2.2. Calculation model of the humidifier
The packing diameter is estimated by using the flooding curve
In the humidifier, the water flows down from the top and forms (see in Fig. 3) for the operating pressure of mHAT, which is
a falling film on surface of the packing. When the air supplied from reported in [23]. Flooding is the operating limit of packing tower.
the bottom contacts with the water film, the air humidification When flooding is reached at some water flow strength, the falling
process will occur driven by the enthalpy difference between the water film doesn’t flow downwards and the mass transfer effi-
water and the air [26]. When ignoring the effect of the water dro- ciency fell sharply. In this work, the packing diameter could be
plets in the air and water distribution region, it can be considered chosen so that the design air velocity is 60% of the flooding
that all the humidification process is finished in the volume of the velocity.
packing. In previous study, the coupled heat and mass transfer in
the humidifier is usually solved by the one-dimensional numerical 3. Design of the humidifier structure
method [10,11]. However, the local mass transfer coefficient
needed in this model is difficult to be obtained, especially for the Integrating the humidification process with the microturbines
packing with complex structure. In this work, an analytical method brings several engineering problems, such as droplet entrainment,
based on the Merkel theory is utilized. It has simple solving process water store in the loop and water bleed-off. These problems can all
but acceptable computing error which is under 4% compared to the be solved in the humidifier. In order to improve its compactness,
numerical method for operating pressure up to 16 bar [27]. the packing is the most significant factor since reasonable selection
According to Merkel theory, the driving force of the humidifica- could not only reduce the volume of their own, but also simplify
tion process is the enthalpy differential between the water and the the structure of the fluid distributors.
air. This results in the effective packing height being taken as:
3.1. Packing
Z ¼ HTU  NTU ð1Þ
In order to calculate the number of transfer unit, NTU, of a Utilizing the design model and input conditions mentioned in
humidification column, an energy effectiveness-NTU model is Section 2, the required sizes for two kinds of packing (FSC-1 and
developed [24].
!
1 1e
NTU ¼
 ln
 ð2Þ
min C; C1 1  e  min C; C1

8
<e ¼ m DHa
C<1
da ðha;id ha;i Þ
ð3Þ
:e ¼ DH w
C>1
mw;i hw;i mw;id hw;id

The heat capacity rate ratio based on the maximum enthalpy

rate difference, C, is calculated as

mda ðha;id  ha;i Þ

C¼ ð4Þ
mw;i hw;i  mw;id hw;id

The specific enthalpy of humid air in Eqs. (3) and (4) is defended on
the basis of 1 kg dry air. It can be written as

ha ¼ hda þ xhv ð5Þ

The steam data are from IAPWS formulation 1997 and the dry
air data are taken from the Hyland-Wexler correlations [24]. For
the mHAT, the maximum air pressure and temperature in the
humidifier are nearly 4 bar and 90 °C respectively. Under this con- Fig. 2. SiC ceramic foam corrugated packing.
730 Z. Xu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 125 (2017) 727–734
8 distributing pipe
FSC-1
TJH-250
F/((m⋅s−1)⋅(kg⋅m−3)0.5)
6 main pipe
2 mounting
0
8 12 16
L/(m3⋅m−2⋅h−1)
Fig. 3. The flooding line of ceramic foam packing.
TJH-250 in Ref. [23]) are calculated and compared, as is illustrated
in Fig. 4. FSC-1 is a SiC ceramic foam packing developed by our
group for the humidifier. TJH-250 is a traditional stainless steel
corrugated packing widely used in chemical industry, and it is con-
sidered as a baseline in this work. The design diameter and height
of the two packings are different due to their different in hydrody-
namics, but the necessary volume of FSC-1 is 0.061 m3 (Fig. 4a)
which is 62% of the TJH-250. It means the smaller volume can be
obtained by the humidifier equipped FSC-1. In Ref. [23], the pres-
sure drop per meter of FSC-1 and TJH-250 is tested to be 760 Pas1
and 390 Pas1, respectively. Although the former is significantly
higher than the later, but the total pressure drop of FSC-1 is
220 Pa correspond to 312 Pa of the TJH-250. This is due to the
much less packing height required by FSC-1 (see in Fig. 4). In gen-
eral, the efficiency of heat and mass transfer is mainly affected by
the air-water distribution in the packed bed. The superiority of the
SiC ceramic foam packing lies in the unique interconnect net-shape
structure, which allows better fluid dispersion ability and more
effective air-water contact area. These result in the extremely high
heat and mass transfer efficiency with the penalty of the great
pressure loss comparing to the traditional structured packing [23].
3.2. Inner parts
The inner parts in the packing column mainly include the water
distributor, the air distributor and the mist eliminator. Since the
excellent wetting ability of the ceramic foam weakens the require-
ment for water uniformity, a no-nozzle ring pipe spray device is
designed (see in Fig. 5). It injects the water with the help of 63
small holes so that the mounting distance to the top of the packing
can be reduced to the minimum. The injection pressure difference
is 2 bar under the nominal water flow rate. In addition, a large
number of small water droplets are avoided in contrast to the noz-
zles, and then the droplet entrainment into the air is reduced as
much as possible. The air distributor is a straight pipe with a rect-
Volume: 0.098m3
Volume: 0.061m3
0.29m 0.39m
0.52m
a) FSC-1 b) TJH-250
Fig. 4. Comparison of the packing sizes for the humidifier.
flange
distributing hole
20
Fig. 5. Sketch of the ring pipe spray device used to inject water.
angle incision facing the bottom of the humidifier. This device can’t
offer a good initial air distribution, i.e., the air velocity distribution
around the pipe is not uniform, but needs only a little installation
space. A stainless steel mesh mist eliminator is used to prevent the
droplet entrained in the exiting air. Since no nozzles are used to
inject water, i.e., little tiny droplets can be produced, a mesh bed
with height of 80 mm is utilized. The pressure loss induced by this
device is nearly 150 Pa, and the minimum droplet diameter that
can be effectively removed is 3 lm.
3.3. Column structure
In order to facilitate the maintenance, the shell of the humidi-
fier is designed into three sections. The intermediate section is
equipped with the ceramic foam packing, whose dimensions in this
research have been indicated in Fig. 4a. The wipers are inserted
between the packing and inner wall of the shell to avoid wall
effects (liquid flowing on the wall of the shell and bypassing the
packing). The air is introduced below the packing, flows upward
and exits from the top of the column. The water is introduced
above the packing, falls down by the force of gravity and then col-
lected in the bottom section. The water loop included in the mHAT
cycle needs a water tank to build the circulation. In order to simply
the system flow, the effective volume of the bottom section is
enlarged and also used to store water. Under these design condi-
tions, it provides a total water capacity of 0.2 m3 that can keep
the mHAT running for 50 min even if no make-up water. In addi-
tion, the total air volume in the humidifier is about 0.21 m3 for
the 100 kW class mHAT. The sketch of the column structure is
shown in Fig. 6.
Depending on above method, the humidifier specifications for
the mHAT are obtained and shown in Table 2.
4. Experimental evaluation and discussion
Based on above design method, a prototype of the ceramic foam
packing humidifier is built and integrated into our test system of
mHAT [9]. This system is converted from the TG80 whose gas-
path between the compressor and the recuperator is redesigned
so that the humidifier can be installed. The performances of the
humidifier are evaluated by the cycle experiments carried out in
HAT mode. The inlet and the outlet parameters include tempera-
0.82m ture, absolute pressure, humidity and flow rate are measured.
The temperature is measured by Pt100 RTD with an uncertainty
of ±0.5 °C in the 0–300 °C range. The pressure is measured by
capacitive pressure sensor with an uncertainty of ±0.25% in the
0–5 bar range. The water volume flow rate is measured by the tur-
bine flowmeter with an uncertainty of ±0.5% in the 1 to 4 m2h1.
The air volume flow rate is measured by the vortex flowmeter with
 Z. Xu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 125 (2017) 727–734 731

top section

intermediate intermediate section top section

section

2.15m

bypass
water inlet bottom section water level
meter bottom
mounting section
0.55 m
seat
make-up
water inlet

Fig. 6. Sketch of the column structure.

Table 2 suring time is about 600 s in our experiments. During this period,
specifications of the humidifier. more than 35 kg of water will be evaporated, and the resulting
Parameter Value water level difference is 200–250 mm. In this way, a relatively high
NTU 1.9
precision (about ±0.5%) can be obtained compared to the former
Packing type FSC-1 approach.
Packing height 0.29 m
Humidifier internal diameter 0.53 m
Humidifier height 2.28 m
4.1. Operating line of the humidifier

The inlet and the outlet parameters measured under design

an uncertainty of ±1% in the 500 to 2500 N m2h1. The mass flow
rate can be calculated by the product of the volume flow rate and
the density. The density is calculated based on the dry air density
from Hyland-Wexler [29] and the humidity ratio from Eq. (6). The
outlet air humidity is close to or in saturated state, which is the
most complex problem since on-line humidity measurement
couldn’t directly work in this situation.
According to the approach employed in Ref. [23], the throttle
sampling device is also used in this research. For the steady state
experiments of design and off-design conditions, the outlet air
humid is also obtained by calculating the water net consumption
over a certain period of time:
condition are shown in Fig. 7. Using these data, the NTU of the
humidifier is estimated to be 2.13 which is about 12% higher than
the design value. This error is mainly caused by the difference in
the air flow rate because part of the air is discharged before the
humidifier to match the flow in the compressor and the turbine.
In order to analysis the pinch, the operating line of the humidifier
is also illustrated in this figure. According to Merkel theory, the
operating line can be given as a straight line since the humidity
ratio of the air is not significantly high in the mHAT. It is shown
that the pinch in the humidifier is about 12 °C (DT in Fig. 7) even
if the minimum difference between the water temperature and
air dry bulb temperature at the bottom is only 2.1 °C, which means
a significant potential to reduce the pinch.

DM=t
xa;o ¼ ð8Þ 4.2. Steady state performances at off-design conditions
mda

where DM is the mass difference of the water in the bottom section
during the measuring time. It can be calculated by the product of
volume difference and the density. In order to obtain the precise
volume difference, the water level is measured by a magnetostric-
tive water level meter with an uncertainty of ±1 mm and the mea-
When the mHAT operates at part-load, the humidifier will work
under off-design conditions. In our present cycle experiments, an
adaptive strategy is used to adjust the part-load operation. That
is, the water flow rate will not be changed during all operating
range. Under this condition, the off-design performances of the
732 Z. Xu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 125 (2017) 727–734

600 110 0.11

Exp. data
T[ ]
Ta, i
P [bar] Ta, o

Air Humidity ratio (kg/kg da)

500 x [kg/kgda]
100 0.10
m [kg/s] Xa, o
Saturation line

Temperature (°C)
Air enthalpy (kJ/kg)

90 0.09
400

80 0.08
300

Operating line 70 0.07

200
60 0.06
100 NTU=2.13 Xa,i: 0.007 kg/kgda
T
50 0.05
50 60 70 80 90 100
0 Load (%)
50 60 70 80 90 100 110
Temperature (°C) Fig. 9. Air temperatures and humidity ratio at off-design conditions.

Fig. 7. Experiment data and operating line of the humidifier under design
condition.
3.0 1.0
NTU

Relative pressure loss (%)

Pressure loss
2.8 0.8
humidifier are analyzed at 50%, 62.5%, 75% and 87.5% of the full-
load of the mHAT. The inlet and outlet water temperatures at dif-
ferent load are plotted in Fig. 8. It can be seen that both of them NTU 2.6 0.6
show a decrease with decreasing load, but the curve of inlet water
temperature has a greater slope. This phenomenon means the inlet 2.4 0.4
water temperature is more sensitive to load change. On the other
hand, the change ranges of water temperatures are significantly
2.2 0.2
lower than that of the load. When the load is reduced by 50%,
the inlet water temperature and outlet water temperature are only
reduced by 6.2% and 3.5% respectively. The reason of this phe- 2.0 0.0
50 60 70 80 90 100
nomenon is that the waste heat recovered by the water in the Load (%)
gas turbine system is not linear with the load (cycle thermal effi-
ciency decreases remarkably from 31% of full-load to 20.5% of Fig. 10. NTU and pressure loss at off-design conditions.
50% load [9]). In the humidifier, the direction of coupled heat and
mass transfer is from the water to the air. The parameters of air
are constrained by the water. As a result, the inlet air temperature, pressure loss has the similar trend but a greater slope. Remarkably,
the outlet air temperature and the outlet air humid ratio display the pressure loss of our packing humidifier at nominal 80 kW out-
the similar trend with the water temperature, as can be seen in put is 2.42 kPa, which is only 0.59% of the absolute operating pres-
Fig. 9. It should be noted that the air at the humidifier outlet attains sure. When the load decreases to 50%, the relative pressure loss
saturation under all experimental conditions, which illustrates the will slightly increases to 0.66%.
expected performance of our design in Section 3.
The NTU and the pressure loss at different load are plotted in 4.3. Dynamic performances
Fig. 10. It can be seen that the NTU, i.e., the humidification capacity
will increase slightly with the decreasing load, and the curve of The dynamic performances of the humidifier in the mHAT start-
up process are shown in Figs. 11–13. Generally, these behaviors are
mainly determined by its thermal capacitance, but the proportions
of every part differ greatly, as is shown in Table 3. Obviously, 76%
110
Tw, i of the thermal capacitance is provided by the water stored in the
Tw, o bottom section, which should be the decisive factor for designing
100 the start-up strategy of the humidifier. There are three stages
(see Fig. 11) in this process: the pre-heating stage, the pre-
Temperature (°C)

90 humidifying stage and the full-humidifying stage. At the first stage,

the air flow rate entering the humidifier is set to 60% of the nom-
80 inal flow to warm the shell, and the stored water is recycled in the
bypass and heated until the water temperature reaches about
70
60 °C. This stage, who accounts for nearly 55% of the total start-
up time, is the most time consuming in the three stages. At the sec-
ond stage, the water will be sent to the top of the packing, and then
60
the air is humidified. During this stage, the flow rate of air and
water remain nearly constant. The thermodynamic parameters at
50 the top of the humidifier, including the inlet water temperature,
50 60 70 80 90 100
Load (%) the outlet air temperature and the outlet air humidity ratio, are
all increasing quickly. However, the thermodynamic parameters
Fig. 8. Water temperatures at off-design conditions. at the bottom of the humidifier (i.e. the outlet water temperature
 Z. Xu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 125 (2017) 727–734 733

1.0 3.0 Table 3

Thermal capacitance of the humidifier.
R
First stage Second stage Third stage
mda Thermal capacitance Value Percentage

Water/air mass flow ratio

0.8
1
2.5 Metallic shell 200 kJK 16%
Mass flow rate (kg/s)

Ceramic foam packing 10 kJK1 8%

0.6 Stored water 1050 kJK1 76%

2.0
0.4
will decrease slightly. Once the air flow rate is increased to the
nominal flow, all above parameters will reach steady state within
1.5 a period of tens of seconds.
0.2 The dynamic behaviors of thermodynamic parameters at the
inlet and outlet are illustrated in Fig. 12. It can be seen that the
response speed of inlet water temperature is obviously slower than
0.0 1.0
0 300 600 900 1200 1500 that of the outlet air temperature and humid ratio, and the outlet
Time (s) water temperature changes always behind the inlet water temper-
ature when humidification beginning (i.e. the second and third
Fig. 11. Air and water flow rate in start-up process. stage). This confirms that the response of the humidifier depends
mainly on the thermal capacitance of the water. It can also be seen
in this figure that some parameters, especially the outlet water
120 0.20 temperature, still vary at the end of the third stage. The phe-
Tw, i nomenon is caused by a low temperature (17 °C) make-up water
Tw, o First stage Second stage Third stage flow, who is introduced into the bottom section and makes the out-
100
Temperature at the top (°C)

Air humidity ratio (kg/kg da)

Ta, i let water temperature drop about 4 °C.

0.15
Ta, o During all the start-up process, the air pressure at the outlet of
80
Xa, o the humidifier remains stable (see in Fig. 13) for the humidifier
introduced under constant rotation speed of the microturbine.
60 0.10

5. Conclusion
40
0.05
In this research, a compact humidifier using novel ceramic foam
20
corrugated packing is developed. This device has a application
potential in the commercial HAT. Several significant conclusions
0 0.00 have been reached as follows:
0 300 600 900 1200 1500
Time (s)

An analytic method for the coupled heat and mass transfer
Fig. 12. Dynamic behavior of thermodynamic parameters. device size is developed from the Merkel function and the
energy effectiveness-NTU model. Based on this method, the
NTU of the humidifier can easily be calculated, and the error
5.0 between calculation and experiment is about 12%.

The compact design of column structure thanks to the excellent
First stage Second stage Third stage
performances of ceramic foam packing, especially dispersion,
4.5 wettability and great contact area. in this reach. As a result,
not only the volume of the packing is reduced, but the struc-
Pressure (bar)

tures of the air and water distributor are also simplified.

4.0
3.5
3.0
0 300 600 900 1200
Time(s)
Fig. 13. Dynamic behaviour of air pressure at the outlet.
and the inlet air temperature) keep almost the same increasing
rates with those in the first stage. At the third stage, the air flow
rate will be increased to 100% of the nominal flow in two minutes,
and the water flow rate stays constant at the same time. The final
water/air mass flow rate ratio will be reduced to about 1.2. During
this stage, the thermodynamic parameters of the humidifier exhi-
bit different behaviors. With the increasing of air flow rate, all the
thermodynamic parameters except the inlet water temperature
According to our present design, the total air volume in the
humidifier is only about 0.21 m3 for the 100 kW class mHAT.

The experimental evaluation of the humidifier is carried out.
The steady state performances are analyzed within the 50–
100% load range of the mHAT. When operating at nominal con-
dition, the humidifier shows a pinch of 12 °C and a pressure loss
of 2.42 kPa (0.59% of the absolute operating pressure). With the
decreasing of the load, the inlet and outlet temperature of the
1500 air and water, as well as the outlet air humid ratio will decrease,
but the maximum decrement is not more than 11%.

The investigation of dynamic behavior has been focused on the
mHAT start-up process. Due to the great thermal capacitance,
especially that of the water stored in the bottom section (it
accounts for 76% of the total thermal capacitance), a relative
slow response of the humidifier has been observed.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support by
the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51606178)
734 Z. Xu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 125 (2017) 727–734
and the Fundamental Research Funds of Shandong University (No.
2015TB010) to this research work.
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