Classification of Heat

Exchangers According to its

Applications

Definition
A heat exchanger is a piece of industrial equipment uniquely designed to conduct thermal energy between
two media. The fluids in contact may or may not be separated by a barrier. This depends on the
miscibility, volatility, and possibility of process contamination.

Reduce energy costs.

Preserve produce at optimal temperatures.

Cool and heat liquids for its processes.

Due to application and service, we can classify heat exchangers as they be used in:

 Chemical Processes

It is essential that heat transfer systems for chemical processes are designed to maximize efficiency.
Because the heat transfer step in many chemical processes is energy intensive, a failure to focus on
efficiency can drive up costs unnecessarily.

The transfer of heat from one fluid to another is an essential component of all chemical processes.
Whether it is to cool down a chemical after it has been formed during an exothermic reaction, or to heat
components before starting a reaction to make a final product, the thermal processing operation is core to
the chemical process.
Shell-and-tube exchangers are the most widely used type of heat transfer equipment in the chemical
processing industry (CPI) because of their flexibility in design and ability to handle fluids with varying
levels of solids. They consist of two parts: the shell and the tubes.

Plate-and-frame exchangers sometimes are used in certain areas of the chemical processing industry as
an alternative to shell-and-tube exchangers. The plate-and-frame designs require less space than a shell-
and-tube exchanger fabricated for similar heat transfer, but they also have some limitations regarding
which process fluids and conditions in which they can be used.

In the chemical processing industry, many processes require exchangers that are fabricated from highly
corrosion-resistant materials. While steam or cold water may be used as one fluid (to heat or cool) in
many applications, there are also process requirements that depend on heat transfer from one highly
corrosive fluid to a different corrosive fluid. With steam or water as one fluid on the shell side, only the
tube side (bonnets, tubes and tube sheets) need to be a highly corrosion-resistant material. With a design
that incorporates transferring heat from one corrosive to another, all components that the fluids touch on
both the shell and tube sides need to be manufactured of a corrosion-resistant alloy.

 Oil and Gas

Heat exchangers play an important role in processing oil and gas. The application of heat exchangers in
industrial processes is critical to ensuring optimal productivity.

They are used in the refining process in cracking units as well as in the liquefaction of natural gas.
(Cracking is the process of breaking the hydrocarbons that compose crude oil into smaller pieces,
according to Chem Guide).

The various types of heat exchangers available play key roles in the oil and gas production processes
listed below:

Hot oil/heat transfer systems

It is important to note that not all heat exchanger processes are aimed at temperature reduction. In the case
of hot oil/heat transfer systems, the objective is to provide heat to drive an associated industrial process.
Heat transfer systems are designed to store and deliver the thermal energy in heated exchanger fluid to
process systems on demand.

Fuel gas conditioning skids

Skid-mounted fuel gas conditioning systems represent another industrially useful application for heat
exchangers. During routine operation, fuel gas conditioning systems generate a lot of heat to ensure a
steady flow of dry, high-purity fuel. These actions ensure the longevity of system components. As a
result, heat exchangers are often incorporated into fuel gas systems to provide an optimal thermal
environment for their smooth operation.

Cold ammonia flow control

Flue gas regulations are often quite stringent, requiring industrial operators to carefully monitor the
quality of gases being released by their processes. Cold ammonia flow control units, which the quantity of
ammonia being introduced into a stream of flue gas/air, utilize a pressurized and heated process involving
an industrial heat exchanger.

Lube oil systems

Lube oil systems integrate all the materials and equipment needed to generate high-quality lubricants in a
thermally powered blending process. Critical components of a proper skid-mounted lube oil blender
include: Mixers, Kettles, Electrical switchgear, Instrumentation, PLC controls.

SCR units
Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) units are usually integrated with ammonia flow control units to
minimize the industrial emission of NOx in flue gases. Both these processes utilize heat exchange devices
to achieve NOx removal, therefore, allowing plant operators to remain compliant with municipal
industrial emission standards.

 Power Production
A thermal power plant having multi-staged steam turbines and heat exchangers therebetween, each heat
exchanger extracting heat from the supply to an upstream stage for adding heat to the supply of the next
successive downstream stage.

Power engineering, common applications of heat exchangers include steam generators, fan coolers,
cooling water heat exchangers, and condensers. For example, a steam generator converts feedwater into
steam.

Double pipe heat exchangers

They are cheap for design and maintenance, making them a good choice for small industries. One fluid
flow inside the tube in these exchangers, and the other fluid flows outside. Although they are simple and
cheap, their low efficiency coupled with the high space occupied in large scales has led modern industries
to use more efficient heat exchangers like shells and tubes.
Shell and tube heat exchangers
In their various construction modifications, shell and tube heat exchangers are probably the most
widespread and commonly used basic heat exchanger configuration in the industry. In nuclear
engineering, this design of heat exchangers is widely used, as in the case of steam generators, which are
used to convert feedwater into steam from heat produced in a nuclear reactor core.

The heat exchange surface must be maximized to increase the amount of heat transferred and the power
generated.

Plate heat exchangers

Compared to shell and tube exchangers, the stacked-plate arrangement typically has lower volume and
cost. Another difference between the two is that plate exchangers typically serve low to medium pressure
fluids, compared to medium and high pressures of shell and tube.

 Waste heat recovery

Industrial waste heat is the energy that is generated in industrial processes which is not put into any
practical use and is lost, wasted and dumped into the environment. Recovering the waste heat can be
conducted through various waste heat recovery technologies to provide valuable energy sources and
reduce the overall energy consumption.

There are many different heat recovery technologies available which are used for capturing and
recovering the waste heat and they mainly consist of energy recovery heat exchangers in the form of a
waste heat recovery unit.

Regenerative and recuperative burners

Regenerative and recuperative burners optimize energy efficiency by incorporating heat exchanger
surfaces to capture and use the waste heat from the hot flue gas from the combustion process.

Economizers
Economizers or finned tube heat exchangers that recover low – medium waste heat is mainly used for
heating liquids. The system consists of tubes that is covered by metallic fins to maximize the surface area
of heat absorption and the heat transfer rate.

Waste heat boilers

Waste heat boilers consists of several water tubes that are placed in parallel to each other and in the
direction of the heat leaving the system. The system is suitable to recover heat from medium – high
temperature exhaust gases and is used to generate steam as an output. The steam can then be used for
power generation or directed back to the system for energy recovery.

Air preheaters
Air preheaters are mainly used for exhaust-to-air heat recovery and for low to medium temperature
applications. This system is particularly useful where cross contamination in the process must be
prevented. Such applications can include gas turbine exhausts and heat recovery from furnaces, ovens,
and steam boilers. It can be based on two different designs, the plate type and the heat pipe type.

There are mainly three commonly used types of air preheaters which are classified as regenerators,
including rotary regenerators, run around coil, and recuperative. These technologies all function with the
same principle as air preheaters, however, have different configurations and used for different purposes.

Plate heat exchanger

there are mainly three types of plate heat exchanger, arranged in either single-pass or multi-pass
arrangements, The plates of plate heat exchangers can either be gasketed, brazed or be welded together.

With the use of a plate heat exchanger the performance of an evaporator used for a heat recovery steam
generator can be improved when a plate heat exchanger is used as the component to superheat the
working fluid of the system.

Heat pipe systems

A heat pipe is a device which can transfer heat from one place to another with the help of condensation
and vaporization of a working fluid. A heat pipe consists of a sealed container, a wick structure, and a
small amount of working fluid such as water, acetone, methanol, ammonia or sodium that is in
equilibrium with its own vapor. A heat pipe can be divided into three different sections: the evaporator
section, the adiabatic transport section and the condenser section The type of working fluid used in a heat
pipe largely depends on the temperature range of the application for which the heat pipe is being used.

Heat pipes in general have a high thermal conductivity, which results in a minimal temperature drop for
transferring heat over long distances, long life that requires no maintenance, as they incorporate passive
operation and no moving parts which can wear out and they have lower operation costs when compared to
the other types of heat exchangers.

Various materials and techniques are used to construct the heat pipe wick structure, groove, screen/woven
and sintered powder metal structures are the most common.

Pulsating heat pipes or PHPs are passive closed two-phase heat transfer devices that are similar to
conventional heat pipes and are capable of transporting heat without the requirement of any additional
power input
  Electronics cooling
Recent developments in the electronic equipment market have been very demanding on two important
design parameters: the size of the equipment and the efficiency of the cooling system.

If the heat generated in electronics components is not extracted, it leads to important increases in the
temperature of these components. Such increases ineluctably induce degradation of the bonding wires,
delamination of solders, and/or the appearance of leakage currents. Moreover, temperature gradients
between electronic chips and their soles generate cyclical thermomechanical stresses throughout the
lifetime of the chips, which results in thermal fatigue, leading ultimately to component failure.

Cooling of electronics requires low volume and lightweight heat exchangers to transfer tremendous
amounts of heat.

Passive heatsink technologies

Passive heat sinks are heat exchangers in the form of finned radiators, generally made of aluminum. They
are called passive because they do not have any moving mechanical component (fan) designed to force
airflow

The most widely used passive heat exchangers are finned natural convection heat sinks.

Active heatsink technologies

Active cooling systems are heat exchangers where the flow of the heat transfer medium (air or liquid) is
forced by a fan or a pump.

the amounts of energy generated by electronic circuits are so great that no passive heatsink of a
reasonable size will be able to do the cooling job the use of active cooling systems, with or without
refrigeration or phase change is necessary for the safe operation of power electronics.

They can be sorted into two categories: single-phase heat sinks, and two-phase heat sinks.

Single-phase heat exchangers

Single-phase heat sinks are heat exchangers in which the cooling fluid (liquid or gas) does not undergo
any phase change, meaning that if the cooling fluid is a liquid, then it remains liquid throughout the
cooling process. They include the following:

Forced convection heat sinks - Cold plate heat sinks - Microchannel coolers - Refrigerated coolers.
By far, forced convection heat sinks are the simplest.

Two-phase heat sinks

These are phase change micro-exchangers, where the cooling fluid (generally a liquid) undergoes phase
changes (from liquid to vapor and back to liquid) during the heat transfer process.

Note that two-phase heat exchangers involve latent heat instead of sensible heat in energy transfers, thus
allowing large amounts of heat to be exchanged over small areas, which leads to great compactness. Two-
phase heat sinks include the following:

Spray coolers - Vapor chambers - Heat pipes.

 Refrigeration and Air Conditioning

In refrigeration engineering, heat exchangers are equally used as evaporators and as condensers. In both
applications, the refrigerant undergoes a phase transition.

Evaporators
The energy processes in an evaporator can be assigned to two different areas.

1. Evaporating The refrigerant absorbs the heat from the medium and evaporates. The
temperature of the refrigerant remains constant despite heat absorption. The absorbed
energy is used for the phase change.

2. Superheating The already completely evaporated refrigerant continues to absorb heat

and is heated up in the process. Superheated refrigerant steam is found at the outlet. This
operating superheat determines the degree of utilization of the evaporator and can be
adjusted via the expansion valve.

Condensers
The energy processes in a properly designed condenser can be assigned to three different areas.

1. Desuperheating the superheated, vaporous refrigerant is cooled from the

superheating temperature to the condensation temperature (desuperheater).

2. Condensing The refrigerant continuously releases heat to the cooling fluid and
condenses at a constant pressure and constant temperature.
 3. Supercooling The already fully condensed refrigerant continues to release heat to the
cooling fluid. The liquid refrigerant is cooled below the condensation temperature.

There different types of heat exchangers used in refrigeration and air conditioning
systems:

1. Shell and tube heat exchangers which are mostly used in the chilled water system in HVAC units
and also can be found on a water source heat pump for hot water.
2. Tubular heat exchangers which can be used as internal heat exchanger for supercooling the
refrigerant. They are designed for high pressure but low water flow applications.
3. Plate heat exchangers which are common for large cooling applications. They can be found as an
evaporators and oil coolers.
4. Finned tube heat exchangers which are widely used in HVAC units. They have many different
forms and shapes, and can be used either as a condenser or an evaporator.

Food processes
Heat exchangers are fully used in food industry. It has been considered as an essential tool for
sterilization, pasteurization, lowering product’s viscosity by heating and a lot other food processing
requirement. And, undoubtedly, with the advancement of technology, the use of heat exchanger is
growing in demand.

Food safety and sanitation best practices are an utmost focus for the food industry. Clearly, part of a good
hygiene program is making sure that the heat exchanger not only is easy to clean, but also stays as clean
as possible for as long as possible.

The choice of heat exchanger depends on many factors, such as the nature of the process to be carried out
(pasteurization, sterilization or dehydration), the viscosity of the food or drink being processed and
whether it contains particles or pieces.
Automotive