Estimation of enhanced heat transfer area targets in process industries

Abstract

Abstract Heat transfer enhancement is one of the most promising methods to optimize heat transfer equipment and to increase heat recovery in industrial processes. Plate Heat Exchanger (PHE) is one of established types of enhanced HEs. To estimate possible benefits of that kind of heat transfer enhancement, a mathematical model of PHE, which accounts for different plate types and corresponding corrugations geometry, is used. Based on this model the optimization algorithm was developed using MINLP method with inequality constraints. The objective function is the heat transfer area of PHE unit. The plate spacing, plate length, the corrugations inclination angle to plate's vertical axis and the ratio of corrugations’ pitch to its height are the optimized variables. The developed algorithm is implemented as DLL module, which can be used for multiple calculations when optimizing heat exchanger networks (HEN).