Air Temperature Inside an Enclosure

[Potcarb]

Is there a good way to estimate the air temperature inside an enclosure? I have a section of pipe I'd like to cover in a "box". I have a fluid flowing through the pipe at about 175 F, and I'd like to see if I can at least keep the temperature at 170 F without any additional heating, just some insulation around the box.

I've been trying to go through some correlations with Nusselt numbers, assuming the air in the box is stagnant and obeys natural convection. After doing all of my calculations, it looks like the box may work, but I'm not entirely confident in my calculations.

 

[IRstuff]

Sure, it'll work, it's just a question of how big the box is and how much insulation there is. Given that you expect the unboxed pipe to remain at temperature, why would you expect otherwise from the boxed section?

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[goutam_freelance]

Best way is to do a CFD analysis with conjugate heat transfer. You will be able to check box dimensions and apply heat losses to the box by assuming different insulation thicknesses. Overall there is no reason it should not work. But as your fluid temperature is 175 deg F and required enclosure temperature is 170 deg F and only 5 deg F is the temperature difference, you need to check the pipe wall resistance carefully. Also since heat transfer coefficient for natural convection will be very low here due to low temperature differential, possibly the radiation heat transfer will not be negligible.

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