Nick:
Your query sends everyone scurrying every which way and coming up with dead ends, guesses, and up blind alleys simply because you don’t furnish ALL the basic data and scope of what you are doing. Let me cite what is confusing or giving problems:
1. 1,000 oC is not a common, expected reactor outlet temperature. This hot a temperature requires a lot of special know-how and background as to the application, fluids involved, pressures, and the process itself;
2. You say you have to cool down the exiting gas stream, but avoid its condensation. How can you consider that you are going to condense steam (and much less N2) at 1,000 oC? Without knowing the actual composition and pressure of the binary we can’t tell what would be a safe temperature to quench down to without causing condensation. But you can. And yet you don’t state those conditions. It’s hard to imagine that you don’t have a super-superheated vapor that can tolerate a lot of additional cooling without condensing the steam portion. But we can’t do anything but ponder.
3. You want to quench with water or air, but that will add more water to the system. You never stated that you can’t dilute the stream. If so, why don’t you give us that scope of work? Also, how can you consider adding air? Doesn’t that also dilute (or contaminate) the stream? Since we don’t know what you are doing, it’s next to impossible to suggest or recommend anything.
4. You say you want to consider an exchanger (at 1,000 oC??). Forget about a TEMA design. You’re talking about what everyone does in these type of circumstances: use a coil-type of apparatus. The expansion compensations are astronomical and a pipe coil (or tube) arrangement is about the only thing that will withstand the movements. The material of construction is totally another hard issue. And the fouling (and plugging) factors are going to be a nightmare.
One of the scary issues on this Forum is that we don’t know you personally or your qualifications. We don’t know if you really understand and dominate the issues at hand and whether you can apply any recommendation or suggestion safely. When we don’t even get all the basic data and scope of work, this makes it doubly dubious as to whether or not any hint or suggestion might hurt somebody – physically or economically. For any professional engineer this is a very important issue. It seems that every time we get this type of query that is deficient in basic data and scope of work, the storyline starts to change as the thread moves along. The “rest of the story” doesn’t come out until later, when everyone realizes that a lot of time, effort, and brain cells have been wasted or spent erroneously on the wrong subject.
I recommend you to tell us all of the application, all the basic data, and what your scope of work is. Perhaps we can go from there. This is not only the safest, most efficient route to take, it is also the most common-sense way to approach any problem.
