642 CHAPTER 14 Heat-Transfer Equipment—Design and Costs odern heat-transfer equipment includes not only simple concentric-pipe exchangers but encompasses complex surface exchangers with thousands of square meters of heating area, Between these two extremes are the conven- tional shell-and-tube exchangers, coil heaters, bayonet heaters, extended-surface finned exchangers, plate exchangers, condensers, evaporators, furnaces, and many other, more specialized heat-transfer units. Intelligent selection of heat-transfer equip- ment requires an understanding of the basic theories of heat transfer that are incor- porated in the sophisticated computer programs presently being used to perform the required design calculations. This chapter presents an outline of heat-transfer theory and the associated design calculation methods, together with an analysis of the general factors that must be considered in the selection of heat-transfer equipment. The shell-and-tube exchanger is the most commonly used type of heat exchanger in the process industry, accounting for at least 60 percent of all heat exchangers in use today. Figure 14-1 shows design details of a conventional two-pass exchanger of the shell-and-tube type. Such exchangers are designed according to TEMA (Tubular Ex- changer Manufacturers Association) specifications and are available for virtually any capacity and operating condition, from high vacuums to ultrahigh pressures, from very low to very high temperatures, and for many temperature and pressure differences be- tween the fluids being heated and cooled. Materials of construction generally provide the only limitations on the operating conditions since they can be designed to meet other conditions of vibration, heavy fouling, highly viscous fluids, erosion, corrosion, toxicity, multicomponent mixtures, etc. Shell-and-tube exchangers may be fabricated from a variety of metal and nonmetal materials with surface areas available from 0.1 to 100,000 m2, However these heat exchangers generally exhibit an order of magni- tude less surface area per unit volume than compact heat exchangers and require con- siderable space, weight, and support structureBasic Theory of Heat Teansfr in Exchangers 643 oe sy eka onal ff Inlet channel Removable Removable/ Rea ‘channel shen cover \ Pass Remove pation \ etme mite Transverse bafles- es idlag closely ting sel feito and tubes Detail of packed end Rollerexpanced showing lating abe see, packing rings the joints ‘and fantem gland with tell-tale holes Figure 14-1 ‘Two-pass shell-and-tube heat exchanger showing construction details. (Ross Heat Exchanger Division of American-Standard.) Compact heat exchangers possess advantages since such units ean operate with ower energy requirements and permit lower fluid inventory as well as improved process design, plant layout, and processing conditions when compared with conven- tional shell-and-tube heat exchangers. Compact heat exchangers may be designed to operate at temperatures as high as 800°C and pressures as high as 20 MPa, although present applications do not involve the combined use of high temperature and high pressure, Basic types of gas-to-gas compact heat exchangers are plate-fin, tube-fin, and all prime surface recuperators and regenerators. Liquid-to-liquid and liquid-to-phase- change compact heat exchangers include gasketed and welded plate-to-frame, welded plate (without frames), spiral plate, and dimple plate heat exchangers. Fouling is one of the major problems encountered in many compact heat exchangers partly due to hindered access for cleaning purposes. An exception to the cleaning difficulty is the gasketed plate heat exchangers which permit easy cleaning. With a large frontal area exchanger, flow maldistribution can also lead to a loss in exchanger efficiency. Unlike the shell-and-tube exchangers, there is no recognized standard or accepted practice available to designers of compact heat exchangers. BASIC THEORY OF HEAT TRANSFER IN EXCHANGERS Heat can be transferred from a source to a receiver by conduction, convection, or radi- ation, In many cases, the exchange occurs by a combination of two or three of these mechanisms. When the rate of heat transfer remains constant and is unaffected by time,CHAPTER 14 Hoat-Tiansfer Equpment—Design and Costs the flow of heat is designated as being in a steady state; an unsteady state exists when the rate of heat transfer at any point varies with time, Most industrial operations in which heat transfer is involved are assumed to be operating under steady-state condi- tions even though such processes may encounter unsteady-state conditions during start- up, cooldown, and surge conditions. On the other hand, unsteady-state conditions are encountered in batch processes, cooling and heating of materials such as metals, poly- mers, or glasses, and certain types of regeneration, curing, or activation processes. Steady-State Heat-Transfer Considerations Most cases of heat transfer in exchangers involve the flow of heat from one fluid through a retaining wall to another fluid. ‘The heat that is transferred flows from the ‘warmer fluid to the colder fluid through several thermal resistances in series. By anal- ogy with electrical conduction, we may relate the heat flux g to the temperature driving force 7, — T, by introducing a total resistance to heat transfer Ria, defined by Ro (141) ‘The total resistance is comprised of the resistances due to convective heat transfer in the two fluids, the resistance due to the fouling that occurs with time on either wall surface, and the resistance to the transfer of heat through the retaining wall. The resistances as- sociated with convective heat transfer in the hot and cold fluids are the reciprocals of, the convective heat transfer coefficients hy, and fi, respectively. The wall resistance is given by x/k,, (assuming a planar wall), where is the thickness of the wall and ky is the thermal conductivity of the wall material. Convention calls for carrying out heat- transfer calculations in terms of the reciprocal of Ry« and defining that term as U, the overall heat-transfer coefficient. With the appropriate substitutions, the expression for Rex in terms of 1/U becomes 1a st Rag tt Rept Che (14-2) where Ry and R.., are the thermal fouling resistances for the hot and cold streams, respectively, Since the more normal configuration for heat transfer involves one fluid flowing inside of a tube and the other fluid flowing on the outside of the tube, an ad- jjustment must be made to Eq. (14-2) to account for the difference in heat-transfer area per unit length of tube for the inside or outside areas of the tube. Thus, the overall heat- transfer coefficient is conventionally based on either the inside wall area Aj, the out- side wall area A,, or infrequently on the mean area A,,. The three overall heat-transfer coefficients are related as = = 14-3) UA, WA,” Unde uo and make no distinction where the hot and cold streams are located.