Heat exchanger

A heat exchanger is an energy-saving device that achieves heat transfer between materials, and it is a process equipment widely used in industries such as petroleum, chemical engineering, petrochemical engineering, metallurgy, pharmaceuticals, light industry, and food. In various application fields, the recovery of high and low temperature thermal energy using heat exchangers has brought significant economic benefits. At present, shell-and-tube heat exchangers account for a relatively large usage among heat exchange equipment.

The classification of heat exchangers is as follows:

(1) Classification by transfer process: Direct contact heat transfer; Recuperative heat transfer; Regenerative heat transfer.

(2) Classification by heat transfer type: Heat transfer without phase change, generally divided into heaters and coolers; Heat transfer with phase change, generally divided into condensers and reboilers.

(3) Classification by structure: Tubular heat exchangers, such as coil-type, double-pipe, shell-and-tube, and finned-tube; Plate heat exchangers, such as spiral-plate, plate-type, plate-fin, plate-shell, and umbrella-plate; Other types of heat exchangers, such as heat pipe, rotary, and block-type.

The shell-and-tube heat exchanger (or called shell-and-tube exchanger) is a type of heat exchanger with extremely wide application. The typical structural forms of shell-and-tube heat exchangers include fixed tube-sheet heat exchangers, U-tube heat exchangers, floating head heat exchangers, and packed floating head heat exchangers. In terms of cost, fixed tube-sheet heat exchangers are usually the cheapest; if expansion joints need to be installed, or if the tube bundle needs to be frequently extracted for cleaning due to the shell-side medium, U-tube heat exchangers are the most cost-effective option.