Page 1 of 3

Air Changes, Part 1: Recirculation Air Review

September 1, 2003

How do you determine the amount of recirculating air to use?

One frequently raised question is how designers determine the amount of
recirculating air to use in a particular oven. The question usually will be be
phrased "Why did they use that number of air changes?" or "How was the
recirculating fan cfm figured?" (Air changes, for the uninitiated, are the
recirculating fan flow divided by the internal volume of the oven.)
Every designer has guidelines and reasons for the fan capacity he or she
chooses, and generalizing about them is risky business. However, the
fundamentals are pretty much the same everywhere, and they're worth
understanding. These descriptions are simplified because of space limitations,
but they illustrate the point.
In recirculating ovens, the recirculating airstream is the medium that
transports the heat from the heater box to the oven chamber. It releases
some of the heat it carries to the oven and its load and then returns to the
heater to be recharged, either by mingling with a burner's products of
combustion or by passing over a heating element, which could be an electric
heater, steam or hot water coils, fuel-fired radiant tubes or a heat exchanger.
The first step in the process is calculating the heat load (BTU/hr, kJ/hr or
whatever other heat units suit your fancy). Most of this is the heat absorbed
by the work, but heat load also includes heat absorbed by conveyors and
conduction losses through the oven walls.
The second step is to determine the key performance criterion for the heating
system. Is temperature uniformity the most important requirement? Heating
speed? The need to evaporate and remove moisture or solvents?
Suppose the application has strict temperature uniformity requirements: No
o

part of the load can be more than 10 F (5.6 C) different from the rest of the
load. That means, in effect, that the recirculating airstream cannot lose more
o

than 10 F of its incoming temperature as it passes through the oven and over
the load. Otherwise, the product in contact with the air at the end of its pass
o

through the oven might be more than 10 F colder than the product that first
encountered the air. How do you achieve this? Among other things, by limiting

Page 2 of 3
the time the product is exposed to the hot air. Get the air in and out quickly;
in other words, use a high recirculating volume (more air changes). Here's an
example.

The amount of heat recirculating air can release will

increase with its temperature drop through an oven.
Air's heat-carrying capacity also increases slightly
with its temperature.

An oven's heat load is 800,000 BTU/hr, and the incoming recirculating air
o

temperature is 400 F (204 C). Maximum acceptable temperature differential

o

is 10 F, so the air must return to the heater before its temperature drops
o

below 390 F (199 C). At 400 F, one cubic foot of air contains 6.44 BTU, based
o

on 0 BTU at 60 F. At 390 F, its heat content is 6.25 BTU, so every time one
cubic foot of that air passes through the oven, it's permitted to leave behind
(6.44 - 6.25), or 0.19 BTU. Divide that number into the heat load
800,000 BTU/hr / 0.19 BTU/ft

3
3

and you get the recirculating volume required, 4,210,530 ft /hr, or 70,180
cfm.
That requires a pretty big circulating fan, so this is where some horse-trading
o

may come in. If, for example, a differential of 25 F (14 C) can be tolerated,

Page 3 of 3
the recirculating volume can be reduced to give longer residence time in the
oven. The air has the opportunity to release more heat before it returns to the
heater, so a smaller recirculating volume, in this case, 28,070 cfm, will do.
These calculations assume you can transfer heat to the load at the desired
rate. Sometimes, however, that shouldn't be taken for granted. In
recirculating ovens, the majority of heat transfer takes place by convection;
that is, by the hot air scrubbing the load surfaces. The heat transfer rate is a
function of several factors -- most importantly, the air velocity, its
temperature and the way it strikes the load surface.
This can pose a problem in large, roomy ovens, where the hot air nozzles can't
be located close to the load. The velocity at the nozzle exits may be fine, but
by the time the air reaches the load surface, it has mingled with the air
already in the oven chamber, and the average velocity of the mixture is too
low to develop the heat transfer rate. One solution is using a higher pressure
circulating fan, but that usually requires substantial increases in horsepower.
Another is to increase the recirculating flow rate, raising the average velocity
at the load surface. One consequence of this is a decease in residence time in
the oven and lower temperature differentials, whether they're needed or not.
In drying or solvent ovens, the need to remove the evaporated liquid may
come into play. Strictly speaking, it shouldn't -- the fresh air brought into the
oven to maintain desired humidity levels or to keep flammable solvents safely
diluted is determined by the capacity of the exhaust fan, not the recirculating
fan. However, the fresh air gets to the exhaust via the recirculating fan, so in
some cases, the recirculating fan may have to be sized to meet this need.

http://www.process-heating.com/copyright/aac2d7dd2f268010VgnVCM100000f932a... 9/22/2009