HEAT EXCHANGERS

Heat Basic Advantages Disadvantages Applications

Exchanger Construction
Type
Double pipe  Two concentric tubes  cheapest  large volume per unit  for small scale
are held on the same  easy to learn volume of fluid heat industries
axis.  low maintenance exchange  learning the concept of
 The flow arrangements  low area provide for heat exchanger
are parallel flow and heat exchange per
counter flow volume
 Hairpin units are
connected in series of
double pipe heat
excanger

Thumb Rules
 Hairpin units are available in sizes up to about 200ft2 of heat transfer area
 To prevent sagging of the inner pipe with a resulting distortion of the annular cross section, pipe length is
limited to 20ft.Therefore a 200ft3 and of 3 in diameter inner pipes requires 10 hairpin connection.
 When one stream is at high temperature and /or high pressure and/or is corrosive, it is passed though the
inner pipe.
Shell and Tube  the tube bundle is  high pressure operation  cleaning and  where less pressure
consist inside the shell  cheap maintenance is difficult drop required
jacket  simple  less capacity  high temperature and
comparatively pressure operation
  one fluid pass through  high surface area  used mainly in all
tubes and other from provided industries
shell
 passes and baffles are
provided for better
performance
Thumb Rules
 Small tube diameters (8 to 15mm) are preferred for greater area to volume density but are limited for the
purposes of cleaning
 The most common plain tube sizes have 15,88,19,05 and 25.40 mm tube outside diameters
 Shell diameter to tube length ratio should b within limits of 1/5 to 1/15
 Tube pitch Pt is chosen so that the pitch ratio is 1.25<Pt/d<1.5
 A baffle cut of 20 to 25 per cent will be the optimum, giving good heat-transfer rates
 To allow sufficient thickness to seal the tubes the tube sheet thickness should not be less than the tube
outside diameter, up to about 25 mm diameter.
 An economic exchanger design cannot normally be achieved if the correction factor Ft falls below about 0.75
Plate and Frame  corrugated plates on a  high HTC  potential of leakage  food & beverage dairy
frame  easy cleaning and  high pressure drop industries
 gaskets ensure that maintenance  not for large  cream pasteurisation
cold and hot fluid don’t  temperature control temperature difference and juice processing
mix  compact design
Thumb Rules
 The plates are normally between 0.5 and 3 mm thick and the gap between them 1.5 to 5 mm.
 Plate surface areas range from 0.03 to 1.5 m2, with a plate width:length ratio from 2.0 to
3.0.
 The size of plate heat exchangers can vary from very small, 0.03 m2, to very large,
1500 m2.
 The maximum flow-rate of fluid is limited to around 2500 m3/h.
 Plate heat exchangers are more suitable for highly viscous materials.
Adiabatic Wheel  intermediate fluid or  less pressure drop  costly  mainly for heat
solid store heat and  compact design  not for low recovery section
then move to other temperature gradient
side to release  less efficient
Phase change heat  hot fluid flows through   Power plant using
exchanger the tubes and cold fluid turbine
through the shell
Direct contact  Direct contact between  Superior Heat transfer  Pressure of two  Air conditioning,
two fluids  Less surface corrosion streams should be humidification, cooling
and fouling same. towers
 Less pressure drop  Cannot be used if
 Low capital cost dilution or
contamination is a
problem.
Thumb Rules
 The rates of heat transfer will be high; with coefficients for packed columns typically in the range 2000 to
20,000 W/m3oC
 At duties requiring only 100-200sqft of surface the double pipe may be more economical
 High pressures can be accommodated more economically in the annulus than they can in a larger diameter
shell.
 When the shell side coefficient is less than that of the tube side, the annular side coefficient can be made
comparable to the tube side
Regenerative Heat  Hot fluid first passes  Large amount of energy  There is always some  Blast Furnaces
Exchangers through the packing is saved as the process mixing of fluids
inside the heat is cyclic  Lot of stress on the
exchanger. After the  Much high heat material and hence
total hot fluid has transfer area cracking is a problem
passed through the
packing, heat stored in
 the packing is
transferred to cold
fluid.
Compact Heat exchanger    

Thumb Rules
 Operating pressures and temperatures are limited to 300psig and 400oF.
 Compact heat exchangers offer a high surface area to volume ratio typically greater than 700 m2/m3 for gas-gas
applications, and greater than 400 m2/m3 for liquid-gas applications.
 They are suitable for cooling and heating with no phase change.