Heat exchangers falling-film

Falling-Film Exchangers Falling-film shell-and-tube heat... 

Heat transfer equipment has a great variation in heat transfer area per unit of material volume. Table 4.4 compares the surface compactness of a variety of heat exchanger types. Falling film evaporators and wiped film heat exchangers also reduce the inventory of material on the tube side. Process inventory can be minimized by using heat exchangers with the minimum volume of hazardous process fluid for the heat transfer area required. 

Internal heat exchange is realized by heat conduction from the microstructured reaction zone to a mini channel heat exchanger, positioned in the rear of the reaction zone [1,3,4], The falling film micro reactor can be equipped, additionally, with an inspection window. This allows a visually check of the quality of film formation and identification of flow misdistribution. Furthermore, photochemical gas/liquid contacting can be carried out, given transparency of the window material for the band range of interest [6], In some cases an inspection window made of silicon was used to allow observation of temperature changes caused by chemical reactions or physical interactions by an IR camera [4, 5]. 

Reactor type Falling film micro reactor Mini heat exchange channel width depth 1500 pm 500 pm... 

The hydroformylation reaction is highly exothermic, which makes temperature control and the use of the reaction heat potentially productive and profitable (e.g, steam generation). The standard installation of Ruhrchemie/Rhone-Poulenc s aqueous-phase processes is heat recovery by heat exchangers done in a way that the reboiler of the distillation column for work-up of the oxo products is a falling film evaporator... 

APV, whose Paraflow plate heat exchanger is illustrated in Volume 1, Chapter 9, supply climbing and falling-film plate evaporators with evaporative capacities up to 10 kg/s. Such units offer the advantages of short contact and residence times and low liquor hold-up, and hence are widely used for the concentration of heat-sensitive materials. 

Figure 1 Flowsheet of the RCH/RP hydroformylation process 38 1 Continuous flow stirred tank reactor,424 2 Phase separator, 3 Stripping column, 4 Distillation column, 5 Heat exchanger, 6 Falling film evaporator, 7 Liquid vapor separator.

Fig. 4. Flow diagram of the Ruhrchemie/Rhone-Poulenc process (137) 1, continuous-flow, stirred tank reactor 2, phase separator 3, stripping column 4, distillation column 5, heat exchanger 6, falling film evaporator 7, liquid-vapor separator.

Figure 17.11. Types of contactors for reacting gases with liquids many of these also are suitable for reacting immiscible liquids. Tanks (a) with a gas entraining impeller (b) with baffled impellers (c) with a draft tube (d) with gas input through a rotating hollow shaft, (e) Venturi mixer for rapid reactions, (f) Self-priming turbine pump as a mixer-reactor, (g) Multispray chamber. Towers (h) parallel flow falling film (i) spray tower with gas as continuous phase (j) parallel flow packed tower (k) counter flow tray tower. (1) A doublepipe heat exchanger used as a tubular reactor.

Falling-film absorbers. These are usually vertical heat exchangers with the cooling medium in the shell and the absorption taking place in the tubes. The solvent flows downward, while the gas may enter either at the bottom (countercurrent flow) or at the top (cocurrent flow). 

Evaporators in commercial use include circulatory systems, shell and tube heat exchangers and falling film-type evaporators. The falling film evaporator has the advantages of a small working volume and a short residence time. All evaporators produce steam that must be purified, and some of the techniques mentioned above can also be applied to this steam103. 

The reactor effluent, which contains unconverted NH3 and C02, is stripped in a falling-film type shell and tube exchanger at reactor pressure. The stripping agent, CO2, flows upward, which is countercurrent to the effluent stream. The stripper tubes are make of 25-22-2 stainless steel, which has lasted almost 30 years in some plants. The stripped-off NH3 and CO2 are then partially condensed and recycled to the reactor. The heat from this condensation is used to make 4.5 bar steam. Some of this steam can be used in downstream sections of the plant while some is sent to the turbine on the CO2 compressor108,110. 

For vertical condensers, condensate can be readily subcooled if required. The subcooling occurs as falling-film heat transfer, so the procedure discussed for falling-film heat exchangers can be used to calculate heat-transfer coefficients. 

Forced convection heat transfer is probably the most common mode in the process industries. Forced flows may be internal or external. This subsection briefly introduces correlations for estimating heat-transfer coefficients for flows in tubes and ducts flows across plates, cylinders, and spheres flows through tube banks and packed beds heat transfer to nonevaporating falling films and rotating surfaces. Section 11 introduces several types of heat exchangers, design procedures, overall heat-transfer coefficients, and mean temperature differences. 

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