International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488

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International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

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

Fouling potential prediction and multi-objective optimization of a flue

gas heat exchanger using neural networks and genetic algorithms
Song-Zhen Tang, Ming-Jia Li∗, Fei-Long Wang, Ya-Ling He, Wen-Quan Tao
Key Laboratory of Thermo-Fluid Science and Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an,
Shaanxi 710049, China

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

Article history: The fouling problem of flue gas heat exchangers is one of the most critical problems to be solved in
Received 6 October 2019 industrial waste heat recovery applications. In this paper, the fouling potential prediction and efficient
Revised 17 January 2020
design method of a flue gas heat exchanger were proposed. Firstly, the evaluation index of the fouling
Accepted 8 February 2020
factor indicating the fouling degree of the heat exchanger was defined. Then, the fouling factors under
different coal ash types and structure parameters were numerically predicted, forming the fouling factor
Keywords: database. Finally, the Pareto optimal solution set is obtained by the neural network and genetic algorithm.
Waste heat recovery The results show that fouling factor index FFI effectively reflects the effect of coal ash type and structural
Fouling potential parameters on the fouling degree, which can make up for the deficiency of existing fouling evaluation
Neural network
index B/A. The thermal-hydraulic performance of flue gas heat exchanger was optimized with multi-
Genetic algorithm
objective optimization method, and the fouling degree of Pareto optimal solutions were compared. Case
Prediction and optimization
A (S1 /D = 3.00 and S2 /D = 1.50) and case B (S1 /D = 2.04 and S2 /D = 2.19) are applicable to the waste heat
recovery of dusty flue gas with and without considering the space size constraint, respectively. Compared
with case E (S1 /D = 1.50 and S2 /D = 3.00) considering only heat transfer performance, thermal-hydraulic
and anti-fouling performance of case A and case B are significantly improved.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In order to achieve efficient recycling of waste heat from high-

In recent years, global climate change and depletion of en-
ergy resources have received increasing attention. High-energy-
consuming industries in different countries are facing the common
challenge of energy conservation and emission reduction, which
can be achieved by waste heat recovery and thermal energy stor-
age [1,2]. According to statistics, as many as 20–50% of the primary
energy input in the industrial sector is finally discharged in differ-
ent forms of waste heat [3,4]. The recycling of industrial waste heat
contributes to reducing primary energy consumption, decreasing
carbon dioxide emissions and improving energy efficiency. For ex-
ample, reducing the design exhaust temperature of a coal-fired
boiler from 125 °C to 85 °C can increase boiler efficiency by 2%
and overall unit efficiency by 0.8–0.9% [5]. However, the current in-
dustrial heat recovery rate in China is only about 30%, and energy
efficiency is low. Therefore, efficient and comprehensive utilization
of industrial waste heat is an important way to achieve China’s en-
ergy conservation and emission reduction strategic goals.
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: mjli1990@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (M.-J. Li).
energy-consuming industries, a large number of flue gas heat ex-
changers have been developed and widely used [6,7], which plays
an important role in energy conservation and energy efficiency.
However, flue gas with industrial waste heat usually contains a
large number of fly ash particles, which can easily cause fouling
problems in flue gas heat exchangers, thus significantly reducing
the heat transfer performance of heat exchanger and affecting the
realization of energy saving and emission reduction targets [8,9].
For example, the fouling problem of heat exchangers in crude oil
refineries leads to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions [10],
while the ash accumulation problem in biomass combustion boiler
evaporators significantly reduces boiler efficiency [11]. As such, the
fouling problem should be mainly considered in the process of
heat exchanger design [12] and soot-blowing cycle determination
[13]. In addition, in the design of the flue gas heat exchanger, the
traditional method is to directly specify the fouling coefficient of
the heat exchange surface, and appropriately increase the heat ex-
change area to meet the heat exchange requirements of the heat
exchanger, but this is against the design principle of high efficiency
and compactness [14]. Therefore, it is of great significance to study
the fouling mechanism of flue gas heat exchanger for the efficient
recovery of flue gas waste heat.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2020.119488
0017-9310/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488

momentum moment equilibrium equation, and predicted the dy-

Nomenclature namic evolution process of fouling morphology on the heat trans-
fer surface [25,26]. On this basis, elliptical tube bundle arrange-
AD projected area of the tube bundle on the inlet, m2 ment and honeycomb circular tube arrangement with low fouling
Ain inlet cross-sectional area, m2 rate and good soot-blowing performance were proposed [27].
B/A alkali-acid ratio Based on the existing dust accumulation model and numeri-
D diameter of circular tube, mm cal prediction method, although the influence of different struc-
dp particle diameter, μm tural parameters, operating parameters and coal ash composition
E Young’s modulus, GPa on the ash deposition characteristics can be predicted, the numer-
FFI fouling factor index ical method is not suitable for multi-parameter dynamic collabora-
MAPE mean absolute percentage error,% tive optimization of flue gas heat exchanger. On the one hand, for
Mdep fouling mass, kg the simulation study, it is necessary to comprehensively consider
Ndep number of deposited particles the deposition, rebound, removal process and dynamic evolution of
Ninj number of particles ejected from the inlet the fouling morphology. The whole process is cumbersome and in-
Nu Nusselt number convenient for practical application. On the other hand, huge com-
p pressure drop, Pa putational costs, especially computational costs in transient simu-
R2 correlation coefficient lations, are an obstacle to combining numerical models with dy-
RMSE root mean square error namic optimization of intelligent algorithms. Therefore, there is a
S1 transverse pitch, mm need to develop a rapid prediction method for the fouling degree
S2 longitudinal pitch, mm that can be used in practical engineering applications with accept-
uin flue gas velocity, ms−1 able accuracy.
WA adhesion work, Jm−2 The premise of constructing a rapid prediction method is to
Y yield strength, GPa propose an evaluation index that can effectively reflect the foul-
ing degree. Traditionally, empirical indices have been used to pre-
Greek symbols
dict fouling trends. Although they have disadvantages, they are
ρ density, kgm−3
still widely used because of their ease of application. However,
v Poisson’s ratio
most of the fouling index developed by researchers is used un-
Subscripts der high temperature slagging conditions, and does not fully reflect
in inlet the fouling degree under medium and low temperature conditions
n numerical value [28]. At present, the main judgment index of fouling degree is the
p predicted value alkali-acid ratio B/A, but it can only reflect the fouling tendency of
coal ash and does not consider the effect of structural parameters,
which also leads to the lack of a rapid prediction method of foul-
The growth process of fouling on convective heating surface is ing degree in the existing studies that comprehensively considers
the result of the combined action of particle deposition and re- the coal ash composition and structural parameters.
moval processes. In order to accurately predict the fouling process In addition to the evaluation indicator, in order to obtain the
of fly ash particles, it is necessary to establish a fouling model that optimal solution of each parameter and solve the nonlinearity and
comprehensively considers the collision, adhesion, rebound and uncertainty, it is also necessary to introduce an intelligent al-
removal processes [15,16]. Mavridou and Bouris [17] investigated gorithm for multi-parameter collaborative optimization. Since the
the particle deposition characteristics of aligned tube bundle with fouling degree has a significant nonlinear relationship with the
tubes of different diameters, and found that the deposition rate is coal ash composition and structural parameters, it is difficult to
obviously reduced by about 30% compared with conventional ar- directly use the multiple regression method for function fitting.
rangement. Li et al. [18] studied the particle deposition character- Therefore, a large number of heuristic models based on sam-
istics of heat exchanger with rhombic tube bundles arrangement. ple data have been developed, such as Artificial neural networks
The results showed that the particle deposition rate in a rhom- (ANN), fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithms (GA), to avoid large
boid arrangement was significantly lower than that in the aligned amounts of repeated prediction work and to achieve rapid predic-
or staggered arrangement at a higher flue gas velocity. Perez et al. tion. Among them, due to the advantages of self-adaptation, self-
[19] numerically predicted the fouling characteristics and morphol- learning, nonlinear mapping and fault tolerance of ANN model, it
ogy of the aligned tube bundle in Kraft recovery boiler, and ana- has been successfully applied to predict the heat transfer perfor-
lyzed the effect of transverse pitch on the fouling characteristics mance of supercritical water (Chang et al. [29]), depth of verti-
and heat transfer performance after fouling. However, most of the cal ground heat exchanger (Chen et al. [30]), slag viscosity (Duch-
particle deposition models used in the literature ignore the role of esne et al. [31]), and nanofluid performance (Naphon et al. [32]).
removal mechanism. In order to solve this problem, Zhan and Ding In addition, Irani et al. [33], Zhang et al. [34] and Esfe et al.
et al. [20] established a particle removal model from the perspec- [35] used genetic algorithm to conduct global optimization of ini-
tive of particle force balance, and predicted the fouling distribu- tial weights and thresholds for overcoming the high dependence of
tion on the surface of finned tube heat exchanger. Wang and He neural network prediction performance on random initial weights
et al. [21,22] studied the fouling characteristics of H-type finned and thresholds. The above results show that the neural network
tube bundle based on Kern-Seaton model, investigated the effect of model based on genetic algorithm can effectively solve the non-
operation and structural parameters on the fouling and heat trans- linear prediction problem. In addition, the genetic algorithm op-
fer characteristics, and verified the numerical prediction model by timization method based on the neural network model has been
field experiments [23]. At the same time, Soltani et al. [24] ana- successfully applied in different fields, such as organic rankine cy-
lyzed the critical conditions of slipping and rolling removal of ad- cle (Yang et al. [36]), shell and tube heat exchanger (Wang et al.
hesive particles, and pointed out that rolling is the main removal [37]), and engine emission performance (Lotfan et al. [38]).
mechanism. Accordingly, in the previous study, we established a However, in the process of optimal design of flue gas heat ex-
fouling model that comprehensively considers particle deposition changer, heat transfer performance, resistance loss, heat transfer
and removal based on the energy conservation equation and the area and economic are usually selected as the objective function
 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488
[39,40], ignoring the effect of fouling on the comprehensive perfor-
mance. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt genetic algorithm to op-
timize the multi-objective function considering the effect of fouling
based on the neural network prediction model, so as to obtain the
optimal design parameters of flue gas heat exchanger.
Therefore, the establishment of evaluation index of fouling de-
gree and multi-parameter collaborative rapid optimization method
in a dusty environment are the focus of this paper. Based on the
fouling model established by the author in the early stage [25], a
ANN model based on genetic algorithm was established and the
nonlinear relationship between fouling factor and coal ash compo-
sition or structure parameters was constructed. On this basis, a de-
sign method combining ANN and GA was formed, and the optimal
structural parameters of the aligned tube bundle heat exchanger
were obtained. The results of this study contribute to the efficient
design of flue gas heat exchangers and the efficient use of indus-
trial waste heat.
2. Model description and numerical methods
2.1. Fouling model and governing equation
In the process of collision with the heat exchange surface, the
fly ash particles in the flue gas may deposit, remove and rebound.
Therefore, in order to accurately predict the fouling characteris-
tics of heat transfer surface, the fouling model established in Ref.
[25] was employed. The specific implementation process is as fol-
lows. 1) The critical collision angle criterion is obtained through
the balance equation between particle’s tangential kinetic energy
and the minimum energy that damages the surface contact. When
the incident angle is greater than the critical angle, the fly ash par-
ticles do not deposit on the heat exchange surface. 2) Under the
premise that the incidence angle of the fly ash particles is less than
the critical angle, the ultimate elastic velocity of the incident parti-
cles can be obtained according to the energy balance between the
kinetic energy and the ultimate elastic energy of the incident parti-
cles, and the elastic or plastic state of the incident particles can be
determined. 3) According to the energy conservation equation of
the normal collision between the incident particles and the fouling
layer, the critical deposition and removal velocities of the incident
particles in the elastic or plastic state are obtained. Based on the
fouling model, the judgment criteria are formed, and the detailed
process is described in Ref. [25].
The governing equations include gas phase model and particle
phase model. In gas phase modeling, flue gas is assumed to be a
constant physical properties and incompressible fluid. The flue gas
flow state is unsteady turbulence, and SST k-w turbulence model
was adopted. In the particle phase modeling, the discrete phase
method (DPM) was used to track the trajectory of fly ash particles
in the flue gas. Since the mass loading rate of the particle phase is
very small (less than 1%), the effect of the particle on the fluid can
be ignored. Therefore, a one-way coupling method was adopted.
The governing equations of the gas phase and discrete phase are
detailed in the Ref. [25].
2.2. Definition of fouling factor
In order to describe the fouling degree, a new fouling factor in-
dex (FFI) was defined, which is the ratio of the fouling mass of
the heat transfer surface to the total mass of the effective inci-
dent particles. According to the fouling prediction model, the foul-
ing amount on the heat transfer surface can be statistically ob-
tained. The effective incident particle mass can also be determined
directly from the fly ash concentration and the inlet dimensions of
the computational domain. Fouling factor index FFI is defined as:
3
Mdep Ndep Ain
FFI = = (1)
Cbulk · AD · uin · t Ninj AD
where, Mdep is the fouling mass on the heat transfer surface, kg;
Cbulk is the fly ash concentration in flue gas, kgNm−3 ; Ninj is the
number of incident particles on the inlet section; Ndep is the num-
ber of deposited particles; Ain is the inlet cross-sectional area, m2 ;
AD is the projected area of the tube bundle on the inlet section,
m2 ; uin is the flue gas velocity, ms−1 ; t is the statistical time, s.
2.3. Computation method of fouling factor index
In this paper, the ANSYS FLUENT software based on the finite
volume method and the user defined function were used to con-
duct the numerical prediction of the FFI. The discrete phase model
was used to solve the particle motion control equation and track
the trajectory of fly ash particles. When the fly ash particles collide
with the heat transfer surface, the user defined function is directly
called to calculate the deposition, removal and rebound process,
and the total fouling amount is counted. Combined with Eq. (1),
the FFI values under the corresponding conditions are monitored
in real time. When the average value of the FFI tends to be stable,
the FFI value is output. The flowchart of the computation method
of the fouling factor is shown in Fig. 1.
The governing equations were discretized by the finite volume
method, the SIMPLE algorithm was used for the coupling of pres-
sure and velocity, and the second-order windward scheme was
used for the convection and diffusion terms. The convergence cri-
terion of the numerical calculation is that the relative residuals of
the variables in the continuity equation, momentum equation, en-
ergy equation, turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent dissipation
equation are less than 1 × 10−6 . Meanwhile, the selection of time
steps also directly affects the accuracy of flow field calculation. Ac-
cording to the criterion of at least 20 time steps in a vortex shed-
ding cycle [41], the selection of time step is chosen to be 0.001 s.
When the flow field tends to quasi-steady state, a certain number
of flying ash particles are injected at the inlet boundary, and the
fly ash concentration in the computational domain is kept constant
under different conditions.
2.4. Physical model and boundary conditions
Cross-flow heat exchangers are commonly used in steam super-
heaters, economizers and air preheaters in boiler systems. In or-
der to obtain good soot-blowing performance, the flue gas heat
exchanger is usually arranged in an aligned tube bundle. In this
paper, the typical tube bundle heat exchanger is taken as the re-
search object. Due to the periodicity and symmetry of its struc-
ture, the heat exchanger can be simplified as a two-dimensional
section perpendicular to the axis of the tube. A schematic diagram
of the selected computational domain and boundary conditions are
shown in Fig. 2.
In the numerical calculation process, the flue gas velocity is
8ms−1 , the tube diameter is 38 mm, and the particle diameter
is 5 μm. To ensure the flow uniformity at the inlet and no reflux
at the outlet, the computational domain is extended by 4 times
and 10 times of the longitudinal pitch, respectively. The number of
incident particles per unit length at the inlet is kept constant to
ensure that the fly ash concentration in the computational domain
is constant. When the relative transverse pitch S1 /D is increased
from 1.50 to 3.00, the number of incident particles is correspond-
ingly increased from 500 to 10 0 0. Since the transverse pitch and
the longitudinal pitch directly affect the flow field, there are sig-
nificant differences in the fouling factors corresponding to different
structural parameters. Therefore, transverse pitch and longitudinal
4 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488

Table 1
Main components of different coal ash (Volume fraction).

Type Fe2 O3 Al2 O3 CaO SiO2 K2 O MgO Na2 O TiO2

1# 4.03 42.96 1.23 43.37 0.3 0.24 0.01 1.76

2# 6.88 30.15 2.72 51.16 0.52 0.64 0.01 1.37
3# 8.03 20.16 3.54 56.88 1.32 2.35 0.13 1.24
4# 9.66 25.13 7.39 43.41 1.39 3.84 0.29 1.13
5# 9.23 17.67 10.76 41.67 0.41 6.43 0.73 0.88
6# 15.1 16.1 12.33 46.73 0.84 3.48 3.58 0.94
7# 13.94 16.69 14.07 38.33 1.25 4.94 0.33 1.14
8# 11.92 16.86 19.08 37.87 1.31 3.54 0.24 1.22

Table 2
Equivalent physical parameters of different coal ash [42,43].

Type ρ , kgm− 3 E, GPa v y, GPa WA , Jm − 2

B/A

1# 3233 216 0.14 4.06 0.132 0.066

2# 3125 183 0.13 3.57 0.134 0.130
3# 3032 158 0.12 3.22 0.135 0.196
4# 3184 183 0.14 3.42 0.141 0.324
5# 3137 169 0.14 3.16 0.147 0.458
6# 3170 162 0.14 3.01 0.147 0.554
7# 3226 172 0.15 3.07 0.151 0.615
8# 3210 173 0.16 3.03 0.158 0.645

pitch were selected as independent variables affecting fouling fac-

tor, and the relative transverse pitch and longitudinal pitch were
both between 1.50 and 3.00. At the same time, coal ash compo-
sition also directly affects the physical parameters of fly ash par-
ticles, and then changes the critical velocity of deposition and re-
moval, resulting in a change in fouling factor. The alkali-acid ratio
B/A is usually used to describe the effect of coal ash on fouling
tendency. To increase the applicability of the prediction method es-
tablished in this paper, there is a certain difference in the type of
coal ash selected, which excludes the coal ash with similar com-
position and expands the span of the content of main components
in coal ash. The main components of different coal ash selected in
this paper are shown in Table 1. The equivalent physical properties
of different coal ash were calculated by volume weighted average
method, and embedded in the fouling model to study the effect
of coal ash composition on the fouling factor. The key equivalent
physical parameters of different coal ash (density ρ , Young’s mod-
ulus E, yield strength y, Poisson’s ratio v, adhesion work WA and
alkali acid ratio B/A) are shown in Table 2.
According to the calculation strategy of fouling factor, S1 /D, S2 /D
and B/A were taken into comprehensive consideration, and the FFI
Fig. 1. The flowchart of the calculation method of the fouling factor.
of flue gas heat exchanger under different conditions were ob-
tained, which were then used for the training and prediction of
neural network.

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of physical model and boundary conditions.

 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488 5

Table 3
Data set of the fouling factor FFI.

FFI S1 /D S2 /D B/A FFI Type S1 /D S2 /D B/A FFI

2# 1.50 1.50 0.1303 0.1604 7# 1.50 1.50 0.6149 0.0722

2# 1.50 2.00 0.1303 0.1715 7# 1.50 2.00 0.6149 0.1046
2# 1.50 2.50 0.1303 0.1600 7# 1.50 2.50 0.6149 0.1544
2# 1.50 3.00 0.1303 0.9481 7# 1.50 3.00 0.6149 0.8703
2# 2.00 1.50 0.1303 0.1713 7# 2.00 1.50 0.6149 0.2702
2# 2.00 2.00 0.1303 0.6132 7# 2.00 2.00 0.6149 0.7992
2# 2.00 2.50 0.1303 1.0937 7# 2.00 2.50 0.6149 1.0772
2# 2.00 3.00 0.1303 1.0311 7# 2.00 3.00 0.6149 0.9535
2# 2.50 1.50 0.1303 0.1237 7# 2.50 1.50 0.6149 0.2619
2# 2.50 2.00 0.1303 0.2766 7# 2.50 2.00 0.6149 0.4908
2# 2.50 2.50 0.1303 0.4238 7# 2.50 2.50 0.6149 0.6989
2# 2.50 3.00 0.1303 0.2356 7# 2.50 3.00 0.6149 0.5131
2# 3.00 1.50 0.1303 0.0986 7# 3.00 1.50 0.6149 0.1957
2# 3.00 2.00 0.1303 0.1301 7# 3.00 2.00 0.6149 0.3569
2# 3.00 2.50 0.1303 0.1916 7# 3.00 2.50 0.6149 0.4515
2# 3.00 3.00 0.1303 0.1213 7# 3.00 3.00 0.6149 0.4134
… … … … … … … … … …

3. Neural network modeling based on genetic algorithm

optimization

3.1. Data set extraction and preprocessing

Artificial neural network is a network architecture composed of

several groups of neurons. In each neuron of the neural network,
the input variables are weighted and summed, and then applied to
a specific output function, called the activation function. The acti-
vation function provides a nonlinear modeling capability for neu-
ral networks, which enables the neural network method to deal
with highly nonlinear, non-restrictive and non-convex systems. The
output of ANN model depends on the connection method, weights
and activation functions, which can be expressed as:
 

y= f wi j x j + b (2)
j

where, f is the activation functions, w is the weight value, x is the

input vector, b is the threshold value.
By numerically predicting the FFI at different S1 /D, S2 /D and
B/A, the data set of the FFI was obtained, as shown in Table 3.
In the data set, S1 /D, S2 /D and B/A are the input variables, and the
FFI is the output variable. The larger the value of the FFI, the more
serious the fouling degree. The entire data set is divided into two
sub-data sets: the training data set (112 data points in total, ac-
counting for 87.5% of the total data set) and the test data set (16
data points in total, accounting for 12.5% of the total data set). The
training data set is used for the training of the neural network,
and the weights and deviations of the neural network are system-
atically updated by the back propagation (BP) algorithm, so that
the neural network can learn the relationship between input and
output data pairs. At the end of the training phase, the test data
set is used to evaluate the predictive performance of the predic-
tive training neural network.
In the process of training neural networks, if there is a signifi-
cant difference in the magnitude of the variable values in the sam-
ple set, the error transfer method is likely to cover up the role of
smaller magnitude variables when correcting the weights. There-
fore, it is necessary to normalize the input and output parame-
ters before training the neural network. In the existing normal-
ization methods, the Min-Max method can maintain the relation-
ship between variables in the original data set without losing gen-
eralization ability [44]. In addition, different from the commonly
used 0–1 Min-Max standardization range, the 0.1–0.9 standardiza-
tion range was adopted to avoid entering the saturated region of
Fig. 3. Neural network structure for FFI prediction.
the transfer function. The normalized function form is described
as:
x − xmin
y = 0.1 + 0.8 · (3)
xmax − xmin
where, y is the normalized value, xmax is the maximum value, xmin
is the minimum value, x is the data set.
3.2. Neural network structure and training parameters
The choice of neural network structure directly affects the pre-
diction performance of the network. In the application of func-
tion fitting and system identification, the multi-layer feedforward
network structure with hidden layer is the most common. Among
them, the three-layer feedforward network structure, that is, the
single hidden layer network, is the most widely used and shows
good performance. In this paper, a three-layer feed-forward neural
network is also selected to predict the fouling factor of the flue gas
heat exchanger, as shown in Fig. 3.
The prediction performance of neural network depends on the
number of neurons in the hidden layer and the choice of activa-
tion function. For the determination of the number of neurons,
on the premise of satisfying the accuracy requirements, the num-
ber of neurons is usually assessed by trial and error method. For
activation function, BP network generally adopts S-type function,
6 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488

such as tangent function, logarithm function, etc. For the learn-

ing rate, a higher learning rate reduces the stability of the system,
while a lower learning rate reduces the convergence speed and in-
creases the probability of the network falling into the local mini-
mum. The training algorithms include Levenberg-Marquardt algo-
rithm (trainlm), proportional conjugate gradient algorithm (train-
scg), BP algorithm with rebound (trainrp), adaptive learning rate
algorithm (traingdx) and so on. Sensitivity analysis of relevant pa-
rameters is analyzed in Section 4.1.

3.3. Weight and threshold optimization based on genetic algorithm

The weights and thresholds in the traditional BP neural network

are continuously updated by the gradient descent method. How-
ever, improper selection of the initial weights and thresholds may
lead to the defects of BP neural network, such as easy to fall into
local minimum and slow convergence rate. The genetic algorithm
just has the characteristics of global optimization and fast con-
vergence rate. Therefore, the genetic algorithm is introduced into
the BP neural network model to optimally search the weight and
threshold to improve the prediction performance of the neural net-
work.
First, assuming the population size is N, N individuals with dif-
ferent initial weights and thresholds are randomly generated to
form an initial population, and then the initial population is en-
coded by real coding to form a gene code chain. Population size
directly affects the optimization effect of genetic algorithm. Too Fig. 4. flowchart of neural network weight and threshold optimization method.
small population size may lead to the generation of sick genes,
while too large population size may reduce the convergence of
the algorithm. The assessment of population size is shown in per. The specific calculation formulas are shown as:
Section 4.1.  n 
According to the genetic algorithm, the higher the fitness of i=1 (ti − oi )2
R2 = 1 − n (5)
i=1 (oi )
2
the individual in the population, the better the individual is repre-
sented and the more likely it is to be a parent. In the optimization 
1
n
process, the fitness of the individual is expected to increase con- RMSE = (ti − oi )2 (6)
tinuously, and the error norm is continuously reduced. Therefore, n
i=1
the reciprocal of the error norm of the neural network is taken as n


the fitness function of the genetic algorithm. Then the fitness cal- 1 
ti − oi

MAPE =
n

ti

× 100 (7)
culation method for each chromosome is presented as: i=1

1
Ffitness =

n
1
n (ti − oi )2
i=1
where, ti and oi are the target value and predicted value of FFI,
respectively, and n is the sample number.
According to the fitness, the preferred operation is carried out
in the genetic space, and a certain proportion of individuals with
large fitness function values are selected to enter the next genera-
tion. According to the genetic strategy, crossover and mutation op-
erators are applied to the group to form the next generation group.
Then, it is judged whether the number of iterations has been com-
pleted, or the performance of the group satisfies a certain index. If
it is not satisfied, the iteration is continued, or the genetic strategy
is modified, and the selection, crossover, and mutation operations
are re-executed. When the termination condition is met, the opti-
mal initial weight and threshold are obtained. Fig. 4 is a flowchart
of a neural network weight and threshold optimization method
based on the genetic algorithm.
3.4. Evaluation index of prediction performance
To evaluate the prediction performance of the neural network,
the correlation coefficient (R2 ), root mean square error (RMSE) and
mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) were adopted in this pa-
(4) 4. Results and discussion
4.1. Effect of coal ash type and structure parameters on fouling factor
index
Based on the numerical prediction method of the FFI, the effect
of different coal ash, S1 /D and S2 /D on the FFI was examined.
Fig. 5 shows the effect of coal ash and S2 /D on the FFI when
S1 /D is constant. First, as can be seen from Fig. 5, the coal ash has
a certain degree of influence on the FFI. When S1 /D is small, the
effect of coal ash on the FFI is not significant, but at the larger
S1 /D, the effect of coal ash is very obvious. In addition, from the
perspective of coal ash, from 1# to 8#, the CaO composition in the
coal ash is increasing, which increases the adhesion work of the
fly ash particles, resulting in an increase in the fouling amount.
However, it is not in any structural parameters that there is a clear
correlation between the FFI and coal ash composition. This can be
explained by the fact that although the adhesion work and critical
deposition and removal velocities of the fly ash particles is deter-
mined by the coal ash composition, the particle velocity is also af-
fected by the flow field, which in turn depends on the structural
parameters. Therefore, this phenomenon is attributed to the com-
bined effects of coal ash composition and structural parameters.
It can also be seen from Fig. 5 that the trend of FFI with S2 /D is
consistent when S1 /D is constant, but the variation trend of FFI is
 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488
Fig. 5. Effect of coal ash and S2 /D on the FFI when S1 /D is constant.
not consistent at different S1 /D. The main reasons can be explained
by two aspects. 1) FFI is affected by the flow velocity between the
tube bundles. Under the condition of the same flue gas inlet ve-
locity, with the increase of S1 /D, the average velocity at the mini-
mum cross-section between the tube bundles gradually decreases,
which leads to the increase of deposition rate and the decrease of
removal rate, and then cause the increase of FFI. 2) FFI is also af-
fected by the vortex shedding between the bundles. When the flue
gas flows through the tube bundle, a vortex is generated behind
the tube and alternately falls off behind the tube, which has a cer-
tain degree of influence on the flow field of tube bundles directly
behind and laterally behind. At the smaller S2 /D, the vortex at the
rear of the tube is obviously suppressed, and the fly ash particles
in the flue gas are difficult to be caught in the wake vortex, re-
ducing the possibility of fly ash particle deposition. At the larger
S2 /D, the reattachment zone of the trailing vortex of the front row
tube in the rear row tube decreases continuously or even disap-
pears, which also reduces the deposition rate on the windward
side of the rear tube. Similarly, when S1 /D is large, the effect of
trailing vortex on the flow field around the lateral rear tube bun-
dle is gradually reduced, and the deposition rate is also reduced.
As can be seen from Fig. 5(a), when S1 /D is 1.5, with the in-
crease of S2 /D, FFI is substantially unchanged first, and then in-
creases significantly. The reason is that with the increase of S2 /D,
7
the suppression effect of the tube bundle on the trailing vortex
is gradually weakened under the condition of small S1 /D, but the
weakening degree is low. When S2 /D increased to 3.0, the suppres-
sion effect was significantly reduced, resulting in more particles
colliding with the rear tube and significantly increasing the depo-
sition rate. It can be seen from Fig. 5(b) that when S1 /D is 2.0, as
S2 /D increases, FFI first increases rapidly and then tends to be sta-
ble. This is because the transverse tube has a weaker effect on the
wake vortex compared to the tube bundle of S1 /D = 1.5. As S2 /D in-
creases, the deposition rate increases, resulting in an increasing FFI
value. However, with the further increase of S2 /D, the effect of the
tube bundle on the flow field tends to be stable, so that FFI tends
to be constant. As can be seen from Fig. 5(c) and (d), when S1 /D
is large, FFI first increases and then decreases with the increase of
S2 /D. As previously explained, when S2 /D is small, the tailing vor-
tex is suppressed, while when at larger S2 /D, the effect of tailing
vortex behind the front tubes on the rear tube is significantly re-
duced.
Fig. 6 presents the effect of coal ash and S1 /D on the FFI when
S2 /D is constant. It can be seen that with the increase of S2 /D,
the influence degree of coal ash components gradually decreases.
In addition, when S2 /D is not larger than 2.5, FFI firstly increases
and then decreases with the increase of S1 /D. When S2 /D is 3.0, FFI
gradually decreases with the increase of S1 /D. The reasons for these
8 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488
Fig. 6. Effect of coal ash and S1 /D on the FFI when S2 /D is constant.
trends are the same as explained in the previous section. How-
ever, it should be noted that in Fig. 6(a), the FFI trend of Sample
1#−3# is inconsistent with the rest of the coal ash. This is because
the composition of different coal ash is different, which makes the
critical deposition and removal velocities inconsistent. Therefore,
at specified S1 /D and S2 /D, the deposition or removal depends on
the magnitude of the incident velocity of the particles and the
critical velocities. It can be considered that when S1 /D = 1.5 and
S2 /D = 1.5, the incident velocity of most of the fly ash particles of
1#−3# coal ash is within the range of deposition velocity, resulting
in a higher FFI than other coal ash.
4.2. Optimal configuration of neural network prediction model
Determining the optimal configuration of neural network struc-
ture is an important step in the research of neural network predic-
tion. The optimal configuration depends on the number of hidden
neurons, activation function, learning rate and population size.
First, the number of neurons in the hidden layer was examined.
With the increase of the number of neurons, the prediction accu-
racy of the neural network is significantly improved, but the com-
plexity of the network also increases, and it is easy to fall into the
phenomenon of overfitting. Therefore, the trial and error method
is used to determine the optimal number of neurons. In this study,
the number of neurons is 1–20, and the effect of the number of
neurons on RMSE and R2 is shown in Fig. 7. It can be seen that
as the number of neurons increases, the RMSE decreases and R2
gradually increases, eventually becoming stable. Moreover, when
the number of neurons is greater than 9, the changes of RMSE and
R2 are very small. In order to ensure the prediction accuracy of the
neural network, the number of neurons was selected as 12.
Next, a comparative study of different training algorithms was
carried out. The Levenberg-Marquardt (trainlm) algorithm has a
high convergence rate and can obtain a lower RMSE than other al-
gorithms in many cases [45]. Scaling conjugate gradient backprop-
agation (trainscg) and gradient descent with the resilient back-
propagation (trainrp) are commonly used training algorithms for
large networks. In addition, the adaptive learning rate algorithm
(traingdx) is very suitable for some special problems that require
slow convergence to the target. The error comparison results of dif-
ferent training algorithms are shown in Fig. 8. It can be seen that
 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488 9

Fig. 7. The effect of neuron number on RMSE and R2 . Fig. 9. The effect of learning rate on RMSE and R2 .

Fig. 10. The effect of population size on RMSE and R2 .

Table 4
Fig. 8. The effect of training algorithm on RMSE and R2 .
Optimal parameter configuration for neu-
ral network model.

Parameters Value

Train function trainlm

the Levenberg-Marquart algorithm has the lowest RMSE value and
the highest R2 value. Therefore, the Levenberg-Marquart algorithm
selected in this paper is used as the training algorithm of neural
network.
In addition, the effect of different learning rates was investi-
gated. Fig. 9 shows the effect of the learning rate on RMSE and
R2 . It can be seen that when the learning rate is within 0.10–0.30,
RMSE value is the lowest and R2 value is the highest when the
learning rate is 0.25, indicating that the neural network model has
a high prediction accuracy when the learning rate is 0.25.
Then, the effect of population size was examined, as shown in
Fig. 10. It can be seen that with the increase of population size, the
prediction error RSME tends to decrease first and then increase. On
the whole, increasing the population size is helpful to improve the
prediction accuracy. When the population size is 150, the RSME
value and R2 value of the neural network model are 0.0103 and
0.9994, which have the best prediction performance.
In addition, log-sigmoid function (logsig) and linear transfer
function (purelin) were selected as the transfer functions of the
hidden layer and the output layer, respectively. According to the
sensitivity analysis of the above parameters, the optimal configura-
tion of the neural network model is obtained, as shown in Table 4.
Population size 150
Learning rate 0.25
Training precision 1.0 × 10−7
Hidden layer function logsig
Output layer function purelin
4.3. Predictive performance verification and comparison with existing
fouling indicator
According to the optimal configuration of the neural network,
combined with the data set of FFI in Table 3, the prediction per-
formance of the neural network was tested and verified. Fig. 11
depicts a comparison of the predicted FFI and actual values. It can
be seen that FFI values predicted by the ANN model are in good
agreement with the sample data. In order to quantitatively evalu-
ate the prediction performance, the RSME, R2 and MAPE of the FFI
prediction results are calculated separately, as shown in Table 5. It
can be seen that for all sample data, RSME and MAPE are 0.0073
and 2.308%, respectively, reflecting a very small deviation between
the predicted and actual values. Moreover, R2 is 0.9996, which re-
flects the established neural network model has a higher fit degree.
10 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488

Fig. 11. Comparison of numerical data and ANN prediction results of the FFI.

Fig. 12. Error and trend comparison of FFI predicted values of partial coal ash.

Table 5 crete. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the accuracy of the

Comparison of error indicators.
prediction results corresponding to the interpolation data points
Parameters Train set Test set All data within the range of input variable parameters. Fig. 12 shows the
RMSE 0.0071 0.0083 0.0073 error and trend comparison of the FFI predicted values of partial
R2 0.9996 0.9995 0.9996 coal ash. It can be seen that the ANN model can accurately predict
MAPE/% 2.317 2.250 2.308 the value and variation trend of FFI of different coal ash, S1 /D and
S2 /D, which also indicates that the ANN model can effectively con-
struct the three-dimensional surface of FFI within the parameter
Therefore, combined with the comparison results of Table 5 and range of input variables.
Fig. 11, the effectiveness of the neural network model in predicting In addition, the FFI predictions were performed on the two coal
the FFI is indicated. ash (sample 1# and sample 8#) with the lowest and highest B/A
Although the established ANN model can accurately predict FFI values, and the three-dimensional surface maps of FFI under dif-
values corresponding to the input variables in the sample set, the ferent S1 /D and S2 /D were obtained, as shown in Fig. 13. It can
change trend of FFI still needs to be investigated. At the same time, be found that at larger S1 /D or smaller S2 /D, the change in FFI is
the selection of input variable parameters in the sample set is dis- not obvious. As S1 /D decreases or S2 /D increases, FFI increases sig-
 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488 11

Table 6
Orthogonal experimental results.

Case S1 /D S2 /D Nu p
1 1.50 1.50 174.63 229.61
2 1.50 2.00 216.73 301.01
3 1.50 2.50 245.30 389.26
4 1.50 3.00 262.84 468.31
5 2.00 1.50 121.54 64.55
6 2.00 2.00 147.86 80.88
7 2.00 2.50 168.74 103.19
8 2.00 3.00 184.67 125.60
9 2.50 1.50 104.16 34.70
10 2.50 2.00 124.66 40.84
11 2.50 2.50 140.97 51.25
12 2.50 3.00 153.15 61.56
13 3.00 1.50 95.06 21.18
14 3.00 2.00 113.44 26.86
15 3.00 2.50 124.32 33.35
16 3.00 3.00 137.72 39.36

from 1.50 to 3.0. Nu number and pressure drop p of tube bundles

Fig. 13. The FFI surfaces of two kinds of coal ash.
nificantly, especially at S1 /D = 1.5 and S2 /D = 3.0, FFI reaches a
maximum value. This conclusion is consistent with the results of
Fig. 5.
According to the commonly used fouling index (alkali-acid ra-
tio B/A), when B/A<0.206, the fouling degree is slight. When B/A
is within the range of 0.206–0.400, the fouling degree is moderate.
When B/A>0.400, the fouling degree is serious. According to this
standard, the fouling degree of sample 8# is serious, while that of
sample 1# is slight. However, this result is not completely consis-
tent with Fig. 13.
According to Fig. 13, the following results can be obtained:
(1) Overall, under the same S1 /D and S2 /D, most of the FFI surface
of sample 8# is located above that of sample 1#, which is con-
sistent with the evaluation result of B/A index. This is because
B/A reflects the effect of coal ash composition on fouling trendy,
and does not consider the effect of structural parameters.
(2) The FFI surfaces of sample 1# and sample 8# intersect, which
is mainly due to the influence of structural parameters. For ex-
ample, for sample 8#, the ratio of the maximum value to the
minimum value of FFI is 9.43, and the difference is close to one
order of magnitude, which indicates the effect of structural pa-
rameters on the fouling degree is not negligible.
Therefore, it can be considered that the B/A evaluation index is
not suitable for directly evaluating the fouling degree of the heat
exchanger, and using FFI can effectively make up for the deficiency
of the existing evaluation index, and can directly take the struc-
tural parameters and coal ash into comprehensive consideration.
4.4. Parameter optimization and performance comparison
In the design process of flue gas heat exchanger, high effi-
ciency, low resistance and low fouling degree are usually contra-
dictory, which also causes difficulties in the design of flue gas
heat exchangers. Therefore, heat transfer performance maximiza-
tion and pressure losses minimization are used as the main objec-
tive function to obtain the optimal solution set, and fouling factor
FFI is used as the auxiliary objective function to determine the op-
timal structural parameters.
To establish the correlation of thermal-hydraulic performance
of aligned circular tube bundles, the effects of geometry parame-
ters are analyzed by using orthonormal experiment full factor de-
sign method. The relative transverse and longitudinal pitch range
with different geometry parameters are shown in Table 6. To con-
veniently optimize the geometry parameters of the heat exchanger,
the correlations of Nu and p are presented in Eqs. (8) and (9).
Then, the prediction accuracy of the correlations is tested, Fig. 14
shows the comparison between the numerical results of Nu and
p and the associated predictions. It can be seen that the relative
deviations of most data points are within 10%, and the average rel-
ative deviations of Nu and p are 4% and 6%, respectively.
S −1.0 S 0.57
1 2
Nu = 210.28 · · (8)
D D
S −5.08 S 1.13
 p = 20.53 + 1016.94 · 1 2
· (9)
D D
On the basis of the correlations of Nu and p, multi-objective
genetic algorithm was introduced to optimize the geometry param-
eters of flue gas heat exchanger, to obtain the Pareto front optimal
solution and verify the anti-fouling performance until the optimal
structure parameters were obtained. Fig. 15 is the flowchart of op-
timization method and optimal parameter selection.
Taking 2# coal ash as the research object, the objective func-
tions and constraint conditions are as follows:
Maximum Nu = f1 (S1 /D, S2 /D )
Minimum  p = f2 (S1 /D, S2 /D )
Constraints : 1.5 ≤ S1 /D ≤ 3.0; 1.5 ≤ S2 /D ≤ 3.0.
The parameters used in the optimization method are: popula-
tion size is 100, maximum generation number is 10 0 0, crossover
probability is 0.8, and Pareto optimal solution proportion is 0.3.
The NSGA-II method was adopted to optimize the objective func-
tions.
Since the optimal solution vector obtained by solving one ob-
jective function does not necessarily make the other objective
function also reach the optimal value at the same time, in fact,
the result of multi-objective optimization is a set of equilibrium
solutions, namely Pareto optimal solution. Therefore, the decision
maker can choose one and multiple solutions from Pareto optimal
solution set as the final solution according to the actual situation.
Fig. 16 depicts Pareto optimal solution set. The contradiction be-
tween Nu number and p can be clearly seen from Fig. 16. Any
change of geometry parameters making Nu number improved will
increase the pressure drop p obviously, which also reflects the
importance of the multi-objective optimization method in the heat
12 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488

Fig. 14. Comparison of prediction and numerical results.

Fig. 16. Pareto optimal solution set.

Fig. 15. flowchart of optimization method and optimal parameter selection.

By comparing the thermal-hydraulic performance of the five
optimal solutions, and focusing on the fouling factor index FFI of
Table 7
different solutions, the optimal parameter combinations suitable
Geometric parameters of the five optimal solutions. for different environments can be determined. Fig. 17 presents the
3D surfaces of Nu, p and FFI of 2# coal ash, especially the posi-
Schemes Geometry parameters Target values
S1 /D S2 /D Nu p tion of the five optimal solutions on the surfaces. As can be seen
from Fig. 17, pressure drop of case A is the smallest, but Nu num-
Case A 3.00 1.50 88.3 26.6
ber of that is also the lowest. Case C, case D and case E have a high
Case B 2.04 2.19 161.3 87.1
Case C 1.78 2.89 216.5 203.0 Nu number, but the values of pressure drop p are very large. Nu
Case D 1.63 2.96 238.8 307.9 number and pressure drop p of case B are relatively moderate,
Case E 1.50 3.00 261.4 465.8 which is an equilibrium solution.
In the following paragraphs, numerical simulations are per-
formed. In order to evaluate the thermal-hydraulic performance of
heat exchangers, the performance indicator of heat transfer capac-
exchanger design process. Here, in order to comprehensively com- ity per unit pump work is introduced. Comparison of heat trans-
pare the performance difference of the optimal solutions, five typ- fer capacity per unit pump work Q/P, and fouling factor index FFI
ical geometry parameter combinations are selected, corresponding of five optimal solutions are presented to obtain the optimal pa-
to the five optimal solutions (case A-E) in Fig. 16. Table 7 lists the rameter combination. Fig. 18 shows the performance comparison
geometric parameters of the five optimal solutions. of the five optimal solutions. It can be seen from Fig. 18 that, case
 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488
Fig. 17. 3D surfaces of Nu, p and FFI of 2# coal ash.
Fig. 18. Performance comparison of the five optimal solutions.
A has the highest heat transfer capacity unit pump work Q/P and
the lowest fouling factor index FFI. However, according to Fig. 17,
case A has the worst heat transfer performance, which means
13
that case A has the best thermal-hydraulic and anti-fouling perfor-
mance when the constraint of heat transfer area is not considered.
Moreover, from the perspective of anti-fouling performance, case D
and case E have very high fouling factor index FFI, and heat trans-
fer capacity unit pump work Q/P is low, which means that case D
and case E are not suitable for waste heat recovery of dusty flue
gas. In addition, Nu, p, Q/P and FFI of case B are relatively mod-
erate and also have good comprehensive performance. Overall, the
geometry parameters of the five schemes can be divided into three
categories: the lateral spacing transverse pitch is obviously larger
than the longitudinal pitch (Class I), the two parameters are close
(Class II), and the former is less than the latter (Class III). Among
them, the flue gas heat exchanger with class III is obviously not
suitable for waste heat recovery of dusty flue gas.
Through the overall performance comparison of the above five
schemes, case A and case B are applicable to the waste heat recov-
ery of dusty flue gas with and without considering the space size
constraint, respectively. According to Fig. 18, it can be seen found
that, compared with case E considering only heat transfer perfor-
mance, the heat transfer capacity unit pump work Q/P of case A
and case B are increased by 200% and 146%, and the pressure drop
values are reduced by 94% and 81%, respectively. Meanwhile, the
fouling factor indexes of case A and case B are reduced by 88%
and 57%, respectively. This also reflects that the flue gas heat ex-
14 S.-Z. Tang, M.-J. Li and F.-L. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 152 (2020) 119488
changer with optimized parameters can significantly improve the
recycling efficiency of the waste heat of dusty flue gas. Moreover,
the significant reduction of the fouling factor can effectively extend
the cleaning cycle and improve the economy, safety and stability of
the flue gas heat exchanger.
5. Conclusion
Aiming at the problem that the evaluation, prediction and op-
timization methods of fouling degree in flue gas heat exchangers
are still not perfect, the evaluation index of fouling degree FFI is
proposed, the prediction model of the FFI under different coal ash
and structure parameters is established, and a multi-objective opti-
mization method combining neural network and genetic algorithm
is formed to obtain the optimal structure parameters. The main
conclusions are as follows:
(1) S1 /D and S2 /D have a significant influence on the FFI. When
S1 /D or S2 /D is large, FFI is significantly reduced, so the pa-
rameter combination of smaller S1 /D and larger S2 /D should be
avoided. At the same time, when S1 /D is small or S2 /D is large,
the effect of coal ash on the FFI is large. It depends not only on
the effect of coal ash composition on the fouling criterion, but
also on the effect of structural parameters on the flow field.
(2) Based on the neural network model that used the genetic algo-
rithm to optimize the initial weights and thresholds, sensitivity
analysis was carried out on the number of hidden layer neu-
rons, learning rate, population size and activation function, and
the optimal parameter combinations were obtained as 12, 0.25,
150 and trainlm algorithm, respectively.
(3) Combined with the FFI data set, the prediction performance of
the neural network was tested and verified. The results show
that the prediction error MAPE of all sample data is only 2.3%,
and the accuracy of the prediction results corresponding to the
interpolation data points within the parameter range of the in-
put variable and the consistency of the prediction trend were
verified. On this basis, the 3D surface of FFI was constructed
effectively.
(4) The existing evaluation index (alkali-acid ratio, B/A) only de-
pends on the composition of coal ash, and is suitable for eval-
uating the fouling tendency of coal ash. However, it cannot
directly evaluate the fouling degree of the flue gas heat ex-
changer. Using the evaluation index FFI can effectively make up
for the shortcomings of the existing evaluation indicator, and
can directly consider the effect of structural parameters and
coal ash.
(5) Multi-objective genetic algorithm was introduced to optimize
the heat transfer performance and fouling degree of flue gas
heat exchanger, and the Pareto optimal solution set was ob-
tained. Case A and case B are applicable to the waste heat
recovery of dusty flue gas with and without considering the
space size constraint, respectively. Compared with case E con-
sidering only heat transfer performance, thermal-hydraulic and
anti-fouling performance of case A and case B are significantly
improved.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Song-Zhen Tang: Investigation, Methodology, Formal analysis,
Validation, Writing - original draft, Software. Ming-Jia Li: Supervi-
sion, Project administration, Conceptualization, Writing - review &
editing. Fei-Long Wang: Validation, Formal analysis. Ya-Ling He:
Project administration, Supervision, Conceptualization, Funding ac-
quisition. Wen-Quan Tao: Project administration, Supervision.
Acknowledgements
The present work is supported by the National Key R&D Pro-
gram of China (2018YFB0605901) and the Foundation for San Qin
Scholar Innovative Research Groups of Shaanxi Province.
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