Chapter

Introduction

1.1 Background

Gasketed-plate heat exchangers (the plate and frame) were introduced in the 1930s mainly for the food
industries because of their ease of cleaning, and their design reached maturity in the 1960s with the
development of more effective plate geometries, assemblies, and improved gasket materials. The range
of possible applications has widened considerably and, at present, under specific and appropriate
conditions, overlaps and successfully competes in areas historically considered to be the domain of
tubular heat exchangers. They are capable of meeting an extremely wide range of duties in many
industries. Therefore, they can be used as an alternative to tube and shell type heat exchangers for low-
and medium-pressure liquid to liquid heat transfer applications. The design of plate heat exchangers is
highly specialized in nature considering the variety of designs available for the plates and arrangements
that possibly suit various duties. Unlike tubular heat exchangers for which design data and methods are
easily available, plate heat exchanger design continues to be proprietary in nature. Manufacturers have
developed their own computerized design procedures applicable to the exchangers they market.

A heat exchanger is a device which used to transfer thermal energy (enthalpy) between two or more
fluids, between a solid surface and a fluid, or between solid particulates and a fluid, at different
temperatures and in thermal contact. Plate heat exchanger is one of the most common heat exchanger
used in industries such as oil and gas processing system because of its compactness, easy maintenance
and good heat transfer characteristics. As its name implies, this type of heat exchanger consists of a series
of thin, corrugated plates which are pressed together in a rigid frame to form an arrangement of flow
channels with alternating hot and cold fluids.

1.1.1 Applications and uses

The simple design of a plate and frame heat exchanger makes it an ideal cooling solution for a wide
variety of applications. One of the most common applications is the cooling of hydraulic fluid and oil in
engines, transmissions and hydraulic power packs. With the right choice of materials they can also be
used to cool or heat other mediums, such as swimming pool water or charge air. One of the big
advantages of using a plate and frame exchanger is that they are often easy to service.
1.2 Objectives

General objective

 To design plate and frame type heat exchanger that heats up cool water from waste water

The specific objectives:

 To specify the design parameters such as pressure drop

 To analyze the performance of plate and frame heat exchanger
 To design the required area for the specified plate and frame heat exchanger
 Analyze of the strength of construction materials
 Selection of construction of materials
1.3 PROBLEM STATEMENT

Heat transfer is the most important parameter to be measured as the thermal performance and heat transfer
efficiency of the plate heat exchanger. As a comparison to other type of heat exchangers, plate heat
exchangers are competitive with shell and tube units because of high heat transfer efficiency and
attractive features even though built of costlier materials. This project is based on cold water will be
heated by a waste water stream in HHWEM factory. The cold water with flow rate of 140Kg/s enters the
gasket plate and frame heat exchanger at 22 oC and will be heated to 42oC. The waste water has same
flow rate entering at 65oC and leaving at 45 oC. The maximum permissible pressure drop for each stream
is 50 psi. Design of plate heat exchanger for this service is to be done. In this project, the main focus is in
designing plate heat exchanger which works under the specified pressure drop and other operating
conditions like optimum size and economics.
1.4 Project scope
This project is mainly concentrating on how to design plate and frame heat exchanger with given initial
conditions. The point to design the plate and frame heat exchanger is to calculate the various outputs of
plate and frame heat exchanger by applying a formula. Designing a plate and frame heat exchanger will
have three step of calculation. These are;

1. Thermal design calculation

2. Hydraulic design calculation
3. Mechanical design calculation