Abstract: In response to the strict demands for high reliability and equipment compactness of the quench heat exchanger of flue gas from the high-temperature pyrolysis incineration of medical waste, this research innovatively designed a vertical multi-pass quench heat exchanger, with flue gas flowing through the tube side and cooling water through the shell side. Taking the inlet and outlet temperatures on the flue gas side and the working medium side, as well as the system pressure drop as the core evaluation indicators, numerical simulation and multi-objective optimization of the heat exchanger were conducted with SolidWorks Flow Simulation. The research has determined the optimal design scheme (single arched baffle plate, with the inlet and outlet on the same side) for the prototype that achieves the best overall performance under the premise of meeting the quenching process requirements. Prototype testing results demonstrated that the heat exchanger achieved effective quenching performance with reasonable flow resistance, and could achieve ash cleaning. It was well-suited for integration requirements of the vehicle-mounted treatment systems, providing important support for the key technological breakthroughs of the small-scale, mobile skid-mounted high-temperature pyrolysis incineration complete equipment for medical waste.

Key words: medical waste, high-temperature pyrolysis, quench, heat exchanger, numerical simulation