Heat exchangers fluid velocities

Overall heat-transfer coefScient, W/m -°C or Btu/ft -h-°F U, based on outside area C/j, U2, t ends of exchanger Fluid velocity, m/s or ft/s o> of approaching fluid fluctuating component... 

Fig. 14.6. Heat exchanger fluid outlet temperature to step change in fluid velocity.

Frictiona.1 Pressure Drop. The frictional pressure drop inside a heat exchanger results when fluid particles move at different velocities because of the presence of stmctural walls such as tubes, shell, channels, etc. It is calculated from a weU-known expression of... 

Distance-Velocity Lag (Dead-Time Element) The dead-time element, commonly called a distance-velocity lag, is often encountered in process systems. For example, if a temperature-measuring element is located downstream from a heat exchanger, a time delay occurs before the heated fluid leaving the exchanger arrives at the temperature measurement point. If some element of a system produces a dead-time of 0 time units, then an input to that unit,/(t), will be reproduced at the output a.s f t — 0). The transfer function for a pure dead-time element is shown in Fig. 8-17, and the transient response of the element is shown in Fig. 8-18. 

Fluid-Elastic Coupling Fluid flowing over tubes causes them to vibrate with a whirling motion. The mechanism of fluid-elastic coupling occurs when a critical velocity is exceeded and the vibration then becomes self-excited and grows in amplitude. This mechanism frequently occurs in process heat exchangers which suffer vibration damage. 

Another serious problem in heat exchangers is corrosion. Severe corrosion can and does occur in tubing and very often with common fluids such as water. Proper material selection based on a full analysis of the operating fluids, velocities and temperatures is mandatory. Very often, heavier gauge tubing is specified to offset the effects of corrosion, but this is only a partial solution. This should be followed by proper start-up, operating and shut-down procedures. 

Throttling The expansion of a fluid through a constricted passage (across which there is a pressure difference), during which no external work is done. The initial and final velocities of the fluid are equal, and there is no heat exchange with external sources. A change in entropy will, however, take place. 

The baffle cut determines the fluid velocity between the baffle and the shell wall, and the baffle spacing determines the parallel and cross-flow velocities that affect heat transfer and pressure drop. Often the shell side of an exchanger is subject to low-pressure drop limitations, and the baffle patterns must be arranged to meet these specified conditions and at the same time provide maximum effectiveness for heat transfer. The plate material used for these supports and baffles should not be too thin and is usually minimum thick-... 

Figure 26.3 shows the relationship between port diameter and fluid velocity at 4 and 7 m/s and highlights the nominal maximum velocities for various plates. As the flow through the machine increases, the entry and exit pressure losses also increase. The nominal maximum flow rate for a plate heat exchanger limits these losses to an acceptable proportion of the total pressure losses, and is therefore a function not only of the port diameter but... 

Typical velocities in plate heat exchangers for waterlike fluids in turbulent flow are 0.3-0.9 meters per second (m/s) but true velocities in certain regions will be higher by a factor of up to 4 due to the effect of the corrugations. All heat transfer and pressure drop relationships are, however, based on either a velocity calculated from the average plate gap or on the flow rate per passage. 

The term erosion-corrosion is used to describe the increased rate of attack caused by a combination of erosion and corrosion. If a fluid stream contains suspended particles, or where there is high velocity or turbulence, erosion will tend to remove the products of corrosion and any protective film, and the rate of attack will be markedly increased. If erosion is likely to occur, more resistant materials must be specified, or the material surface protected in some way. For example, plastics inserts are used to prevent erosion-corrosion at the inlet to heat-exchanger tubes. 

Pressure drop. Rather than specify a fluid velocity, it is often preferred to specify the pressure drop across the heat exchanger. In retrofit situations, where a new heat exchanger is to be installed in an existing plant, the allowable pressure drop is often highly constrained. This is because in a retrofit situation, it is often desirable to avoid... 

We now wish to examine the case where we allow for heat exchange with a substantially constant temperature heat sink (e.g., an evaporating or condensing fluid or a material flowing at a velocity such that its temperature change... 

Heat is to be transferred from one process stream to another by means of a double pipe heat exchanger. The hot fluid flows in a 1 in. sch 40 tube, which is inside (concentric with) a 2 in. sch 40 tube, with the cold fluid flowing in the annulus between the tubes. If both fluids are to flow at a velocity of 8 ft/s and the total equivalent length of the tubes is 1300 ft, what pump power is required to circulate the colder fluid Properties at average temperature p = 55 lbm/ft3, p = 8 cP. 

Now, from its essential notion, we have the feedback interconnection implies that a portion of the information from a given system returns back into the system. In this chapter, two processes are discussed in context of the feedback interconnection. The former is a typical feedback control systems, and consists in a bioreactor for waste water treatment. The bioreactor is controlled by robust asymptotic approach [33], [34]. The first study case in this chapter is focused in the bioreactor temperature. A heat exchanger is interconnected with the bioreactor in order to lead temperature into the digester around a constant value for avoiding stress in bacteria. The latter process is a fluid mechanics one, and has feedforward control structure. The process was constructed to study kinetics and dynamics of the gas-liquid flow in vertical column. In this second system, the interconnection is related to recycling liquid flow. The experiment comprises several superficial gas velocity. Thus, the control acting on the gas-liquid column can be seen as an open-loop system where the control variable is the velocity of the gas entering into the column. There is no measurements of the gas velocity to compute a fluid dynamics... 

In the case where fluid flows in the shell side space of a shell-and-tube-type heat exchanger, with transverse baffles, in directions that are transverse, diagonal, and partly parallel to the tubes, very approximate values of the heat transfer coefficients at the tube outside surfaces can be estimated using Equation 5.12a, if is calculated as the transverse velocity across the plane, including the shell axis [1]. 

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