在设计热管式空气预热器中，以往常常采用能量平衡的方法。由于设计热管空气预热器时其影响因素众多，采用能量平衡设计出的热管式空气预热器，难于评价其经济性能的优劣。本文采用效率为约束的能量平衡方法设计热管式空气预热器，从而达到优化设计的目的，并且在工程实际应用中取得了较好的效果。 In the design of heat pipe air preheater, the energy balance method has always been used. Because of its many influencing factors when designing heat pipe air preheater, the heat pipe air preheater designed by energy balance is difficult to evaluate the pros and cons of its economic performance. In this paper, the heat pipe air preheater is designed by using the energy balance method with the constraint of the efficiency, so as to achieve the goal of optimal design and achieve good results in engineering practice.