Selection of Material

Heat Exchanger Tube

Why Heat Exchanger Tube?

Our B.Tech project is to Design a condenser for the Forbes
Marshall Lab located in Mechanical Engineering
Department.
As a condenser is a type of heat exchanger, we chose to
go for the selection of material for Heat Exchanger Tube .
Problem statement:
Design a condenser for steam entering at a pressure of 3
bar and temperature of 133.530C using water as cold fluid.
What is condenser?
In systems involving heat transfer, a condenser is a device
or unit used to condense a substance from its gaseous to
its liquid state, by cooling it. Condensers are typically heat
exchangers which have various designs and come in many
sizes ranging from rather small (hand-held) to very large
industrial-scale units used in plant processes. For
example, a refrigerator uses a condenser to get rid
of heat extracted from the interior of the unit to the
outside air. Condensers are used in air conditioning,
industrial chemical processes such as distillation,
steam power plants and other heat-exchange systems.
Use of cooling water or surrounding air as the coolant is
common in many condensers.

The main components of Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger

(Condnenser) are Shell and Tube.

Requirements of the material used for Tube

1) Physical Properties
High heat transfer coefficient (requiring high
thermal conductivity for tube material).
Thermal expansion coefficient to be low.
2) Mechanical Properties
Good tensile and creep properties (High creep
rupture strength at the highest temperature of
operation and adequate creep ductility to
accommodate localized strain at notches are
important).
Good fatigue, corrosion fatigue and creep-fatigue
behaviour.
3) Corrosion Resistance
Low corrosion rate to minimize the corrosion.
4) Manufacturability
Ease of fabrication is an important aspect for
selection of materials. The usual manufacturing
steps involved for heat exchangers are bending of
tubes, joining of tube to tube sheet by rolling,
welding or rolling and welding, forming of shell
geometry and welding of shell plates and shell to

nozzle and the heat treatments associated with

the welding steps.

Function
Heat exchanger tubes are used in many types of heat
exchanger like shell and tube, helical coil tube, tube in
tube heat exchanger, radiator. The main function of the
tube is to act as a separating device between hot and
cold fluid. It takes the heat from hot fluid and supplies
to cold fluid. In the discussed case we are using shell
and tube type of heat exchanger. We will focus on tube
inside the shell that is heat exchanger tube.

Constraints
1) Tube should withstand 3 bar and E > 100 GPa.
2) It should sustain 133.530C temperature steam.
3) Thermal expansion l=l0T <= 1mm
4) Thermal Resistivity <= 0.1 mK/W
Free Variables
Tube wall thickness
Choice of material

Calculations for Material Index :

Convective heat transfer is equal to conductive heat
transfer
Q=

kA T
t

Where Q= Heat transfer per unit time

K= Thermal Conductivity
A= Surface area available for heat transfer
T= Difference in temperature
t= Tube thickness
Considering the tube as a pressure vessel
=

r p
t

Where,
r= radius of the tube cross section
p= pressure difference
Q=

kA T
r p

Q
T
=
(k )
A r p

Q/A is to be maximised by maximising the product (k*)

Therefore material index M= k*
By putting following values in the above equation M
Q= 438 kJ/kg,

L= 1.67 m

p= 1.2 kPa,

T= 50o C

M= 20*103 Pa.W/mK

Screening
The screening is a process of eliminating the materials
which does not fit the criteria of selection. In this case
thermal conductivity should be more than 10W/mK and
youngs modulus should be more than 100 GPa.

RANKING AND ATTRIBUTES

The material index line passes through the alloy region

having brass, bronze alloys and 18% nickel silver alloy

Material and comments

Brasses - Liable to dezincification
Phosphor bronzes -Cheap, but not as corrosion resistant as
aluminum-bronzes
Aluminum-bronzes, wrought Nickel-iron-aluminum-bronzes
-An economical and practical choice More corrosion
resistant, but more expensive

Hence it is better to use Phosphor Bronze as a material for

heat exchanger tube.