Heat recovering from biogas waste energy requires robust heat exchanger design. This paper presents the design of fuel gas-air heat exchanger (FGAHE) for recovering waste heat from biogas burning to regenerate desiccant material. Mathematical model was built to design the FGAHE based on logarithmic mean temperature difference (LMTD) and staggered tube bank heat transfer correlations. MATLAB code was developed to solve the algorithm based on overall heat transfer coefficient iteration technique. The effect on tube diameter on design and thermal characteristics of FGAHE is investigated. The results revealed that the smaller tube diameter leads to smaller heat transfer area and tube. On the other hand, the overall heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt numbers have larger rates at smaller tube diameter. In conclusion, the nominated tube diameter for FGAHE is the smaller diameter of 0.0127 m due to the high thermal performance. © 2018 The Authors, published by EDP Sciences.