Heat Exchangers are used in many ways like petroleum industries, food industries, power generation, cooling systems, etc.
What is a heat exchanger?
The heat exchanger is a device that transfers heat from one fluid to another. It is used for heating or cooling purpose.
How its works?
In a heat exchanger, one fluid is hot and the other is cold, heat transfer takes place between two fluids. fluids are arranged in co-current,counter-current, and cross-current, but counter-current arrangement is most common and efficient.
Types of heat exchangers?
There are several types of heat exchangers :
1)shell and tube heat exchanger: It is the most common indirect type of heat exchanger. Two fluids one is shell side and the other is tube side.
There are several tubes arranged in parallel called tube bundles. And the circumference of this bundle is called bundle diameter.
shell and tube heat exchanger also subdivided into subparts :
- U-tube heat exchanger: Tubes are bent at one side and give the shape of U.
- straight tube heat exchanger: Tubes are straight arranged.
Generally, corrosive liquids are taken inside the tube-side because of ease of maintenance.
2)plate and frame heat exchanger: It consists of several thin plates arranged with a gasket. Two fluids stream flow counter currently.
One flows up to down in one plate and the other plate fluid goes down to upside and heat transfer takes place between Because of gasket hot and cold fluid are not mix with each other.
Pressure drop in this type of heat exchanger is high, but cleaning is easy. Used for low-pressure fluids.
3) spirally wound heat exchanger: Also call coil-wound heat exchanger. It is a special type of shell and tube heat exchanger. In this tubes are arranged in a spiral shape.
It creates a strong tubular effect shell and tube side which increases the efficiency of heat transfer.
4) Finned heat exchanger: In this type fins are inserted for effective heat transfer. If shell and tube heat exchanger than fins inserted on tubes and plate and frame heat exchanger than on two parallel plates.
