racookpe1978. Thanks for your help.
1) Remember, if your gas stream needs to be 515 dec C, then you spent a LOT of money heating it up to 515 deg C and you don't want to cool it off and waste your money. Is it worth the saved money between a A36 bellows and a stainless bellows to lose all of that expensive hot gas you need? (Or is the hot gas truly a "waste product" that you can't run into a heat exchanger somehow? )
I agree with you about the energy lost, but I think the designer thought that it is not an important issue since the feed gas is heated by the downstream combustion gas in many sets of coils. We have plenty of energy on this case and it would be much more expensive to try to use this heat for other process outside the unit plant.
2) If your gas stream is 515 deg C, but because there is "no insulation" on this particular expansion joint, the joint metal itself is less than 425 deg C and is therefore "safe" because the metal temperature is less than 425 deg C, then "plant safety" is only maintained IF you can keep the metal temperature that low ALL of the time. So now you have to go the other way, and verify that on the hottest day of the year with the greatest humidty and highest (dirtiest) reasonable surface and least wind flow at all, the metal surface will still be less than 425 deg C.
I agree with you. I really do not know how much cost the designer saved on this, using A36 instead of some alloy steel. But if you boil the world at 100°C, the metal temperature is going to be ok. I made that calculation.
3) In part, I'd question this assumption anyway of 425 degrees steel temperature, because that inside gas temp of 515 is going to be hitting the bellows' wall, so even if the outside is 420 deg C, the inside will be hotter.
That was our question at first. That's why we needed to calculate the heat flux through the system. That is all a schedule matter and if we stop the plant just because of that, it's going to be nuts.
The outside ambient temperature is expected to be bellow 41°C on that height. But if goes to 60°C, the maths says the inside metal temperature will not achieve 350°C.