HEAT EXCHANGERS

INTRODUCTION TO HEAT EXCHANGER

Various heat exchange operations carried out in chemical process
plants are:
1. Heating and cooling (without phase change)
2. Boiling or vaporization of liquids (involving phase change from
liquid to vapour)
3. Condensation of vapours (involving phase change from vapour
to liquid)
Heat Exchanger:
i. “Heat exchanger is a device used to exchange heat between
two fluids that are at different temperatures”.
ii. The media may be separated by a solid wall so that they never
mix or they may be in direct contact.
i. Various types of heat transfer equipments are used in the
chemical industry depending upon the applications involved.
ii. The heat exchange equipments involve heat energy transfer
either by conduction, convection or by radiation mode.
iii. In the chemical industry, shell and tube type heat exchangers are
mostly used.
iv. Heat exchangers are widely used in petrochemical plants,
petroleum refineries, refrigeration and air conditioning and
power plants.
v. Based upon function, a heat transfer equipment or heat
exchanger can be referred to as cooler, heater, condenser, etc.
Cooler:
i. It is heat exchange equipment employed to cool a process fluid
by means of water or atmospheric air.
ii. It involves the removal of sensible heat from the process fluid.
Condenser:
i. It is heat exchange equipment employed to condense a vapour or
vapour mixtures.
ii. It involves the removal of latent heat with help of suitable cooling
medium.
Heater:
✔It is heat exchange equipment which imparts sensible heat to process
fluid.
✔It heats process steam by condensing steam.
Reboiler:
✔It is heat exchange equipment employed to meet the latent heat
requirement at the bottom of distillation column.
✔The heating medium may be either steam or a hot process fluid.
Vaporizer:
✔It is heat exchange equipment which vaporizes part of the fluid.
Evaporator:
✔It is heat exchange equipment employed for the concentration of a
solution by evaporation of water.
✔Condensing steam is used as a heating medium.
Phase change exchangers:
✔Heat exchangers can be used either to heat liquid to boil it or can
be used to cool vapour and condense it to liquid.
Types of Heat exchangers
1. Double pipe heat exchanger:
✔It is the simplest type of heat exchanger used in industry.
✔It is used when the required heat transfer is relatively small.
✔It consists of concentric pipes, connecting tees, return heads and
return bends.
2. Shell and tube heat exchanger:
i. A shell and tube heat exchanger consists of number of parallel tubes,
ends of which mounted in the tube sheets, and the entire tube bundle
is enclosed in a cylindrical shell.
ii. In this exchanger, heat transfer surface is offered by tubes, fluid
through tube is known as tube side fluid and shell means shell side
fluid.
iii. Shell: Outer cylindrical casing which one of the fluids flows in one or
more passes
iv. Tubes: Inside the cylindrical shell which consists of number of tubes
v. Baffles: It is to direct fluid across the tube bundle and run
perpendicularly to the shell.
3. Others
i. Heat exchangers may be classified in several ways.
ii. One classification is according to the fluid flow arrangement or the
relative direction of the hot and cold fluids.
iii. The fluids are may separated by shells and tubes.
iv. If the both fluids passes through the same direction and the
arrangement is called parallel flow heat exchanger.
v. If the both fluids passes through the opposite direction and the
arrangement is called counter flow heat exchanger.
i. Both fluid streams travels only once this arrangement is called
single pass heat exchanger.
ii. Another flow configuration is one which the fluids move at right
angles to each other is called cross flow heat exchanger.
iii. Two types of cross flow arrangements are possible.
iv. In this configuration the gas across the finned tube bundles and
separate channels between the fins is called unmixed.
v. If the tubes are without fins the gas flowing across the tubes is
said to be mixed because it can move freely in the heat exchanger.
✔The fluid flowing through the tubes is called tube fluid whereas the
fluid flowing outside the tubes is called shell fluid.
✔When the large quantities of heat are transferred the exchanger
should becomes large so that we can go for multipass arrangements.
✔Depending upon the heat transfer area requirement we can have
multiple tubes and shell passes.
✔Flow conditions for shell and tube type heat exchangers are neither
parallel flow nor counter flow type.
✔To create turbulence in the shell side fluid and to enhance a cross
flow velocity of the fluid relative to the tube is called baffles.
✔This results a higher heat transfer coefficient for the outer tube
surface.
✔There are several other special types of heat exchangers used in
industrial applications.
✔Some of them have the tubes with fins, pins or spiral grooves on the
outer surface.
✔Normally a liquid flows through the tubes and a gas with a low heat
transfer coefficient over the extended surfaces; such types are called
compact heat exchangers.
Overall heat transfer coefficient
i. The thermal design of a heat exchanger involves the calculation of
the necessary surface area required to transfer heat at a given rate
for given flow rates and fluid temperatures.
ii. The concept of overall heat transfer coefficient U is great
significance in the heat exchanger calculations.
Fouling Factors
i. However, it is a well known fact that the surfaces of a heat
exchanger do not remain clean after it has been in use for some
time.
ii. The surfaces become fouled with scaling or deposits which are
formed due to impurities in the fluid, chemical reaction between
the fluid and wall material, rust formation, etc.,
iii. The effect of these deposits is felt in terms of greatly increased
surface resistance affecting the value of U.
iv. Equations (3) and (4) are valid only for clean surfaces.
v. This effect is taken care of by introducing an additional thermal
resistance called the fouling resistance Rf
Rf must be determined experimentally by testing
the heat exchanger in both clean and dirty conditions,
being defined by
Mean temperature difference
✔The mean temperature difference in a heat transfer process depends
on the direction of fluid involved in the process.
✔The primary and secondary fluid in an heat exchanger process may
(a) Flow in same direction- parallel flow (or) cocurrent flow
(b) Flow in opposite direction- counter current flow
(c) Perpendicular to each other-crosscurrent flow
✔With saturation steam as primary fluid the primary temperature can
be taken as constant since the heat is transferred as a result of a change
of phase only.
✔The temperature profile in the primary fluid is not dependent on the
direction of flow.
Logarithmic mean temperature difference (LMTD)
Parallel flow Heat exchanger
Counter flow Heat exchanger
Plate type Heat exchanger
✔A plate type heat exchanger is a heat exchanger that uses corrugated
metal plates to transfer heat between fluids.
✔The plates have corner ports and are scaled by gaskets around the
ports and the plate edges.
✔The plates which are spaced by rubber gaskets are compressed
together by means of tie bolts between a stationary frame part (head)
and a movable frame part (follower).
✔It is used to form an arrangement of parallel flow channels with
alternating hot and cold fluids.
✔The plates serve as the heat transfer surfaces and of frequently
stainless steel.
✔Ports at each corner of the plates act as the headers and the gaskets,
which provide seal for the system, direct the fluid flow.
✔In this exchanger, one fluid flows through the odd numbers channels
and the second one through the even numbered channels.
✔The gap between plates is 1.3 to 1.5mm.
✔It provided with inlet and outlet nozzles at the ends.
✔The fluids are exposed to a much larger surface area because the
fluids are spread out over the plates and this allows for the fastest
possible heat transfer.
✔The temperature of approach in plate heat exchanger may be as low as
100C whereas in shell and tube exchanger is 50C or more.
Advantages:
✔These units are very compact and thus occupy very less floor place
✔Effective heat exchange with viscous fluids up to 30kg/ms
✔A large surface is available from a small volume
✔The handling is easy
✔High heat transfer coefficient
✔Provide large heat transfer area in a small volume
✔Absence of inter leakage of fluids
✔They are expandable
✔Less fouling

Disadvantages:
✔It requires long gaskets to hold the plates
✔Particulate contamination by fluids become block the plate space
✔Pressure drop is high
Effectiveness- NTU method of Heat exchanger analysis
✔Effectiveness – NTU method is used when the temperatures of the
fluids leaving the exchanger are not known
✔This method is based on the effectiveness of a heat exchanger in
transferring a given amount of heat
✔For obtaining an expression for the heat transfer rate without
involving any of the outlet temperatures
✔Effectiveness: It is the ratio of the actual heat transfer to the
maximum possible heat transfer in a heat exchanger

✔When one of the fluids undergoes a maximum possible temperature

change.
✔Certainly, the fluid having small heat capacity rate only can undergo
the maximum possible temperature change
✔The actual rate of heat transfer, Q, can be determined by either
equations (a) or (b).
✔Qmax is the rate of heat transfer that a counter flow heat exchanger of
infinite area would transfer with given inlet temperatures, flow rate and
specific heats.
✔Also we recognize that the maximum possible heat transfer would be
obtained if one of the fluids was to undergo a temperature change equal
to the maximum temperature difference present in the exchanger
✔We consider two distinct cases to illustrate this point.
1. If Ch > Cc
✔For this type of heat exchanger, with no external heat losses, the
outlet temperature of the cold fluid will equal the inlet temperature of
the hot fluid
✔The temperature distributions in the fluids are shown in figure
12.13(a),

2.If Ch < Cc
✔In this case the outlet temperature of the hot fluid would equal the
inlet temperature of the cold fluid, as shown in figure 12.13(b),
Effectiveness for a parallel-flow heat exchanger
✔Let us now determine the specific form of the effectiveness.
✔NTU relation for a parallel flow heat exchanger first.
✔Assuming Cmin = Cc,e from equation (21) is
Effectiveness for a counter-flow heat exchanger
✔From an analysis like that made in the preceding section, the
following relation for effectiveness in a counter flow heat exchanger
can be obtained.

✔Various types of heat exchanger configurations and their relations for

effectiveness are summarized in table 12.3.
✔For the sake of brevity Cmin/Cmax has been put as C and NTU as N.
✔The effectiveness relations given in table 12.3 are represented
graphically in figures 12.14 through 12.19.
Determination of individual film coefficients experimentally is simplified by a
method called the Wilson analysis. This method is most successful for single-
phase heat exchangers (with no boiling or condensation on the side of interest). It
requires the ability to vary the flow rate of the fluid on the side of interest while
holding the flow rate of the opposite fluid constant. The overall heat-transfer
coefficient (U) is determined for each flow rate. By plotting the inverse of U versus
the inverse of the velocity or the flow rate, normally raised to a fractional power
between 0.6 and 0.8, the inverse of the film coefficient (hi) for the side of interest
can be experimentally determined. The film coefficient can be compared to values
predicted by correlations in the literature.

If the experimentally determined film coefficient is 25 percent or more below that

predicted, then most likely the exchanger internals are not functioning as
designed. The results assist in troubleshooting heat exchangers and pinpointing
what service may be needed to repair them (e.g., cleaning versus replacement).
# Flow rate Stream Temperatures (°C)
(L/min)
Cold flow L/min Cold In Cold out Hot in Hot out
1 5 10 40 48 41
2 9 9.5 36 48 38
3 17 9 31 48 33
4 21 9 30 48 31
5 36 10 26 48 26