Heat Exchangers are the devices used to transfer heat from one medium to another. The transfer of heat mainly takes place by the process of conduction and convection. Depending on the various parameters, heat exchangers can be classified into many types, and we at AIC Heat Exchanger offer all of these under our roof. Let us give you a walk through different types of heat exchangers used extensively are following:-
- Shell and tube type: This is the most commonly used heat exchanger. As the name suggests it consists of a shell full of flowing cooling medium and stacks of tubes having the fluid to be cooled. It further can be classified based on the direction of flow viz. parallel or counter flow.
- Tubular Types: This is almost same as the shell and tube type, the differences being the tubes used in this type of heat exchangers are concentric, i.e one tube is placed inside the other. One tube carries the fluid to be cooled whereas the other carries the cooling medium.
- Plate Heat Exchanger: These types of heat exchangers have found their use in various industries. They consist of a stack of plates which provide more surface area to transfer heat, thereby making it very efficient. They can also be used for heating of medium in addition to cooling.
- Fin Heat Exchanger: They are very similar to the plate type heat exchanger except they have fins fitted between the plates. These fins solve two purposes- one, they tend to support the plates and two they increase the surface area further.
Designing of these heat exchangers requires many parameters and heat calculations, few important ones which should be kept in mind are given below:
- Material: Material composition plays a very important role in designing of heat exchanger. It should be kept in mind that the tube/plate inside the heat exchange should have high heat transfer coefficient to facilitate better heat transfer, whereas the material of the heat exchanger itself should have less heat transfer coefficient to ensure the heat is not radiated outside.
- Fluid used: The material used in the heat exchanger should also be as resistant to the fluid used as possible. This will ensure less chemical reaction between them, thereby helping in greater efficiency.
- Maintenance Envelope: The heat exchanger should be designed as maintenance friendly. It should have provisions to clean the tubes or repair the tubes in case of any damage to them.
- Efficiency: This is also an important factor while designing the heat exchanger, however, it should not be confused with the effectiveness of the heat exchanger. A heat exchanger might be very effective but not efficient or the other way around. An efficiency of the heat exchanger is defined by the ratio of temperature difference between what is actually recovered to a temperature that could be recovered.
Considering the various losses due to friction, corrosion and others, obtaining an efficiency of 100% is impossible and hence heat exchangers are designed considering all the above factors in mind. We at AIC Heat Exchanger offer wide variety of these equipments for domestic and industrial applications. Visit us today!