DOI: 10.21276/sjet.2016.4.9.7

Pages: 430-440

Heat energy and heat energy generation become significant in manufacturing, production and processing processes. Heat management is needed to avoid wastage of human efforts, cost implication, material sources needed to generate this heat.and to minimize cost of production. Hence, this work critically investigates thermal efficiency and heat flux analysis of a tube boiler used in palm oil processing. A good comparative analysis between a boiling vessel without extended tubes and a tube boiler reveals the thermal efficiency, energy, materials and time conservation of the tube boiler over the latter of the same capacity. This provokes the investigation of the conditions that favoure s its thermal efficiency ,energy , materials and time conservation .Tube boiler boils with steam ,and its heat surface area increased by the provision of tubes thus the water expose larger surface area to the heat source hence its boils within shortest p ossible time and change to gaseous state-steam. The residence time of palm nuts is short as possible in the steam chamber owing to the fact the heat energy possessed by steam is higher than that of boiling water. The choice of fuel used cannot be undermined, fuel with high heat value –calorific value will heat faster than that of lower calorific value. Coal, hydrocarbonfuels, dry wool is locally available. This study reveals that tube boiler is energy, time, water and fuel efficient with high thermal efficiency in boiling palm nuts to facilitate processing operations .