heat exchanger

heat exchanger, any of several devices that transfer heat from a hot to a cold fluid. In many engineering applications it is desirable to increase the temperature of one fluid while cooling another. This double action is economically accomplished by a heat exchanger. Among its uses are the cooling of one petroleum fraction while warming another, the cooling of air or other gases with water between stages of compression, and the preheating of combustion air supplied to a boiler furnace using hot flue gas as the heating medium. Other uses include the transfer of heat from metals to water in atomic power plants and the reclaiming of heat energy from the exhaust of a gas turbine by transferring heat to the compressed air on its way to the combustion chambers. Heat exchangers are used extensively in fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants, gas turbines, heating and air-conditioning, refrigeration, and the chemical industry. The devices are given different names when they serve a special purpose. Thus boilers, evaporators, superheaters, condensers, and coolers may all be considered heat exchangers.

Heat exchangers are manufactured with various flow arrangements and in different designs. Perhaps the simplest is the concentric tube or double-pipe heat exchanger shown in Figure 1, in which one pipe is placed inside another. Inlet and exit ducts are provided for the two fluids. In the diagram the cold fluid flows through the inner tube and the warm fluid in the same direction through the annular space between the outer and the inner tube. This flow arrangement is called parallel flow. Heat is transferred from the warm fluid through the wall of the inner tube (the so-called heating surface) to the cold fluid. A heat exchanger can also be operated in counterflow, in which the two fluids flow in parallel but opposite directions. Concentric tube heat exchangers are built in several ways, such as a coil or in straight sections placed side by side and connected in series.

The most common type of heat exchanger is the shell-and-tube type illustrated in Figure 2. It utilizes a bundle of tubes through which one of the fluids flows. These tubes are enclosed in a shell with provisions for the other fluid to flow through the spaces between the tubes. In most designs of this type, the free fluid flows roughly perpendicular to the tubes containing the other fluid, in what is known as a cross-flow exchange. In nuclear reactors fuel rods may replace the tubes, and the cooling fluid flowing around the rods removes the heat generated by the fission process.