Heat transfer surfaces

In a shell and tube exchanger the heat transfer jface is the total surface of all the tubes separating the two fluids. In practice this surface is 

As heat flows from hot fluid to cold fluid through the metal tube wall it is opposed by five resistances  

These five resistances are added to obtain R, the overall resistance to heat transfer. 

Of the five component resistances, has little significance when 1/R is less than 125, as is usual in oil refinery exchangers. Values of r o and r, -, which allow for the amount of fouling expected outside and inside the tube within a reasonable cleaning period, cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty because of the different types of fouling deposits. These values are best obtained from experience with other units in similar type of duty. 

Values of and r,- depend on the physical properties of the fluid and its velocity. Since pressure drop and velocity are interrelated, it is customary to start with the allowable pressure drop as a base and determine the maximum fluid velocity permissible without exceeding this pressure drop. The higher the fluid velocity the lower the values of Tq or r,-. 

---

The heat-transfer surface area determined by the basic sizing or rating method described herein is considered the minimum required area. There are also additional surface area requirements in the final sizing of a heat exchanger. 

The subscripts / and o correspond to inner and outer surfaces of tube, respectively. In these equations, Pi is a reference area for which U is defined, and T[ is the total efficiency of a finned heat-transfer surface and is related to the fin efficiency, Tl by... 

Fypass Flow Effects. There are several bypass flows, particularly on the sheUside of a heat exchanger, and these include a bypass flow between the tube bundle and the shell, bypass flow between the baffle plate and the shell, and bypass flow between the shell and the bundle outer shroud. Some high temperature nuclear heat exchangers have shrouds inside the shell to protect the shell from thermal transient effects. The effect of bypass flow is the degradation of the exchanger thermal performance. Therefore additional heat-transfer surface area must be provided to compensate for this performance degradation. 

A heat-transfer surface area, flow area 2 m... 

Commonly used heat-transfer surfaces are internal coils and external jackets. Coils are particularly suitable for low viscosity Hquids in combination with turbine impellers, but are unsuitable with process Hquids that foul. Jackets are more effective when using close-clearance impellers for high viscosity fluids. For jacketed vessels, wall baffles should be used with turbines if the fluid viscosity is less than 5 Pa-s (50 P). For vessels equipped with cods, wall baffles should be used if the clear space between turns is at least twice the outside diameter of the cod tubing and the fluid viscosity is less than 1 Pa-s (10... 

Fig. 34. Internal cod configurations for heat-transfer surfaces (a) hehcal cod where = 0.02T, = 0.15T, and = 0.65Z (b) baffle cod...

Polymerization in Hquid monomer was pioneered by RexaH Dmg and Chemical and Phillips Petroleum (United States). In the RexaH process, Hquid propylene is polymerized in a stirred reactor to form a polymer slurry. This suspension is transferred to a cyclone to separate the polymer from gaseous monomer under atmospheric pressure. The gaseous monomer is then compressed, condensed, and recycled to the polymerizer (123). In the Phillips process, polymerization occurs in loop reactors, increasing the ratio of available heat-transfer surface to reactor volume (124). In both of these processes, high catalyst residues necessitate post-reactor treatment of the polymer. 

Catalyst Development. Traditional slurry polypropylene homopolymer processes suffered from formation of excessive amounts of low grade amorphous polymer and catalyst residues. Introduction of catalysts with up to 30-fold higher activity together with better temperature control have almost eliminated these problems (7). Although low reactor volume and available heat-transfer surfaces ultimately limit further productivity increases, these limitations are less restrictive with the introduction of more finely suspended metallocene catalysts and the emergence of industrial gas-phase fluid-bed polymerization processes. 

Another approach, the so-called seeding technique, provides preferential sites for the nucleation of scale, which permits the heat-transfer surfaces to remain clean of scale. Extensive studies of this technique have been conducted, and field use was reported ia the former USSR as early as the mid-1960s (42). The use of ion-exchange methods is another possible approach. Eor calcium, the exchange can be represented as... 

Scale. Scale deposits are formed by precipitation and crystal growth at a surface in contact with water. Precipitation occurs when solubiUties are exceeded either in the bulk water or at the surface. The most common scale-forming salts that deposit on heat transfer surfaces are those that exhibit retrograde solubiUty with temperature. 

Although they may be completely soluble in the lower temperature bulk water, these compounds (eg, calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, and magnesium siUcate) supersaturate in the higher temperature water adjacent to the heat-transfer surface and precipitate on the surface. 

Scale control can be achieved through operation of the cooling system at subsaturated conditions or through the use of chemical additives. The most direct method of inhibiting formation of scale deposits is operation at subsaturation conditions, where scale-forming salts are soluble. For some salts, it is sufficient to operate at low cycles of concentration and/or control pH. However, in most cases, high blowdown rates and low pH are required so that solubihties are not exceeded at the heat transfer surface. In addition, it is necessary to maintain precise control of pH and concentration cycles. Minor variations in water chemistry or heat load can result in scaling (Fig. 12). 

Only trace amounts of side-chain chlorinated products are formed with suitably active catalysts. It is usually desirable to remove reactive chlorides prior to fractionation in order to niinimi2e the risk of equipment corrosion. The separation of o- and -chlorotoluenes by fractionation requires a high efficiency, isomer-separation column. The small amount of y -chlorotoluene formed in the chlorination cannot be separated by fractionation and remains in the -isomer fraction. The toluene feed should be essentially free of paraffinic impurities that may produce high boiling residues that foul heat-transfer surfaces. Trace water contamination has no effect on product composition. Steel can be used as constmction material for catalyst systems containing iron. However, glass-lined equipment is usually preferred and must be used with other catalyst systems. 

---