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How can I model an air cooled exchanger with one

fan switched off?
Products: Aspen Air Cooled Exchanger
Last Updated: 20-Jan-2017
Versions: V7.2, V7.3, V8.0, V8.4, V8.6, V8.8, V9.0, V8.8.2
Article ID: 000009258
Primary Subject: General

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Problem Statement
Air cooled exchangers can have multiple fans in a bay where the airside flowrate can be controlled by either
switching a fan off or by varying the fan pitch but keeping the rotational speed unchanged.

Within Aspen Air Cooled Exchanger program, we can specify the unit as a grid (along and across) the unit where
for each grid section we can specify the flowrate or inlet temperature.

Described below is how the option can be used to simulate a condition when a fan is switched off.

Solution
In Aspen Air Cooled Exchanger program user can use Outside distribution form under  Input | Program Options |
Outside Distribution option to account for the distribution of air flow through the various bundle sections of the
exchanger. This facility allows the user to specify a two dimensional x side mass flow and/or temperature
distribution at the bundle entry.

The elements of the distribution are specified in a grid which can have maximum of 12 elements along the tube
length and 6 elements across the bundle width. An inlet outside mass flow or temperature distribution may be
caused by the effect of adjacent structures. (See HTFS Handbook sheet AE1). Note that the Outside distribution
is applied to a bundle and as the program treats every bundle identically, then the distribution data will apply to
all bundles in a unit. The effect of the distribution on performance can be seen in the Results.

As the mass flow distribution and the temperature distribution are specified on the same grid size, then the grid
dimensions must be large enough to accommodate the more complex distribution. The values to be entered in
the mass flow distribution grid are either the flow through each element as a percentage of the highest element
flow or the flow through each element as a percentage of the total flow through the bundle.

Assuming an air cooled exchanger with 2 bays (2 fans per bay) and we are simulating the case with one fan
switched off, user can specify a grid of 2 X 2 for which the percentage of the total flow for the flow zones would
be 33.33 % for three zones with one `0' (one fan switched off). Program would automatically allocate the total
flow rate multiplied by the specified percentage for different zones. When we have one fan switched off, we also

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need to consider the reduction in air side flowrate. User need to take into account the reduced air side flow rate
e.g. in this case where one of the fan is switched off, you would reduce the total air flowrate by ? which means you
enter 270 kg/s instead of 360 kg/s as all the other three fans are operating at the set 90 kg/s each.

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