Air Fin Cooler

Optimisation for Offshore

& Onshore Application
Air coolers might be similar to heat exchangers on surface, but delving a little
deeper will result in the one seeing the differences. This paper will discuss various
air cooler design options to suite offshore and onshore (plant) requirements.

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Heat
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nlike shell and tube exchangers, air cooler

design is totally different. In shell and tube
exchangers, utility flowrate is fixed, based
on cooling duty. In the case of the air cooler,
air flow rate is an open variable for designing. For
given cooling duty, at a higher air flowrate, air
outlet temperature drops, providing higher temperature gradient (EMTD) for heat transfer. At
higher air flowrate, air side heat transfer coefficient (HTC) increases, because of higher velocity
and air side turbulence. Thus both will tend to
reduce heat transfer area (HTA), at the cost of
higher fan power.
Requirements of offshore and onshore air cooler
design are quite different. For offshore structures, air
cooler footprint and weight should be minimum, to
reduce overall structure cost. For major offshore
applications, tube material is exotic (expensive). Thus
minimum HTA is economic.
For onshore or plant air coolers, generally space
is not a constraint. For onshore applications, air
cooler can be placed on technological structure,
pipe rack or ground.
This paper will discuss various design options to
suite offshore and onshore (plant) requirements.
Basically this involves optimisation of air cooler foot
print, HTA and fan power.
If the air cooler designer or the client is not
aware of possible design variations; then air
cooler design may not be the best for the given
project requirement. These will be illustrated by
the Lean Amine Air Cooler example. Examples
demonstrate five alternate designs, to suit vari-

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HYDROCARBON ASIA, OCT-DEC 2011

ous layout requirement with huge variation in

HTA and air flow rate (power) requirement.
Based on site location, the electric power supply
can be cheap or costly. Tube material can be CS to
expensive alloys. Based on fluid service, tube material is fixed. Thus air cooler design involves careful
optimisation of HTA and power cost, using available space for the air cooler. For expensive tubes,
HTA can be minimised by increasing power consumption. All these criteria can change, air cooler
design significantly.
To suit above variation in requirements air coolers
allow a wide variation in hardware design; e.g.
number of bays, number of bundles per bay, number
of tube rows, number of tubes per rows, tube passes,
tube length, number of fans, fan diameter and fan
power, etc. Tube size and fin design can also change
overall air cooler design. Generally based on application and project specification the tube size, material
and fin design can be fixed.
For offshore applications, a compact air cooler is
designed using higher air flow rates (higher EMTD)
and with maximum possible tube rows. Generally
this option requires higher power demand.
For onshore (plant) applications, available space is
utilised, to optimize fan power and HTA of air cooler.
Above optimisation should be done with consideration of following constraints.
Maximum possible bundle width & tube length,
to suite transport & manufacturing requirements
Minimum Number of fans per bay, maximum fan power to avoid gear drive, process
control etc.

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 Project contraints (available space etc.)

Budget {Total cost = hardware including structure
cost and operating cost (fan power)}
Example of Lean Amine Air Cooler from Amine
Recovery Unit (ARU)
After regeneration, lean amine is cooled in lean /
rich exchanger, followed by lean amine air cooler.
125 tones / hr of lean amine is cooled from 72C to
65C, with the cooling duty of 1 MW.
Table 1 illustrates five alternate air cooler designs.
For each design refer tube length, air cooler width,
number of tube rows and total fan power. For same
cooling duty, all four parameters widely vary to suite
different project requirement. Figure 1 represents the
visual effect of foot print area and tube layouts for
five alternate designs.
Air side thermal resistance is highest among all

Notes :
1)
2)
3)
4)

resistances. Thus increase in air flowrate has double

effect of increasing EMTD with increase in overall
HTC. Both will reduce required HTA. But fan power
increases with increase in air flowrate or with increase in number of tube rows.
Design A has second lowest power requirement
with reasonable HTA. While design C has highest
air flow / power requirement, with smallest HTA.
As Design C has highest power with three fans, &
similar length as design A; thus design C is not
attractive for any application. Thus Design A is suitable for onshore / plant application.
Design D has smallest tube length with reasonable
power requirement, thus suitable for offshore structure or pipe rack. Smaller length of Design D is
achieved with six tube rows and highest number of
shorter tubes per row.

Blue values are minimum and red values are maximum, for indicated parameter.
Bract values indicates ratio of highest value to smallest value, for indicated parameter.
$ - Bay width for design E (for two bundle)
** Approximate foot print area of air cooler.

HYDROCARBON ASIA, OCT-DEC 2011

55

pass, thus inlet and outlet are at

opposite sides. This should be
discussed with Piping department; as this is not a common
practice. Smaller Foot print of
Design B is achieved using six
tube rows, with fewer tubes per
row; as compared to design A.
Design E has smallest fan
power with smallest HTA requirement. But this design occupies biggest foot print area
among all options (Two tube bundle per bay). Thus Design E is only
suitable for plant, with plenty of
space for air cooler. For expensive
tube material &/or costly power
supply; Design E is most attractive option among all options.

Conclusion
Design B has 40% more power requirement as
compared to Design A. If power is costly or space
is not a constraint, then design A is best choice. But
Design B offers 50% smaller foot print (width x
length) as compare to design A. Thus design B can
be selected, when space is a constraint, for technological or offshore structure. Design B has odd
This publication thanks Mr. Manish
Shah for providing this paper Mr.
Manish Shah has received Degree in
Petrochemical Engineering from MIT
India. Mr. Shah is UK Charter engineer (CEng, MIChemE) with 16 years of process
engineering experience in leading various feasibility study, concept, feed, basic and detail engineering projects for Oil & Gas, Refinery and
Petrochemical units. In the field of heat transfer,
Mr. Shah has presented several papers in international conferences and magazine. Currently,
He is working with Ranhill Worleyparsons Sdn
Bhd as a Lead Process Engineer. His main specialization is in exchanger (shell and tube and
air cooler) and Tray/packed column designing.

Heat
Exchange

56

HYDROCARBON ASIA, OCT-DEC 2011

Thus it is clear that, by varying air flow rate, number of tube rows, passes,
tube length and number of tubes per row, many
alternative designs are possible for single
air cooler.
Thus air cooler design involves; careful
optimisation of power, space and hardware to
suite project needs.
HA Enquiry Number 10/12-07
He is proficient in Steady state simulation using
HYSYS, UniSim, T-SWEET/PROMAX, Aspen
Plus and PRO II. He has done extensive work in
flare and blowdown system designing for oil
and gas facility. He has done Process design of
offshore & onshore oil and gas facilities with
gas compression, gas liquid water separation,
oil stabilisation, produced water system, acid
gas removal and gas Dehydration. Process design of downstream industry includes LPG recovery, SRU (Sulphur recovery unit), TGTU,
ARU, SWS and water phase sulphur oxidation.
Process design of midstream industry includes
LSG (Low Sulphur Gasoline), DHDS (Diesel
Hydro De-Sulphurisation), Butene-1 and Mild
Hydro cracking unit.

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