Heat Transfer Enhancement in Heat Exchangers to Reduce Plant Energy Demand

Shell and tube heat exchanger are the workhorses in refineries and chemical plants. In order to improve plant efficiency they should be designed in such a way that a maximum of heat from the process is recovered and used as preheat for the process streams. Often due limitations governed by the flow conditions a plain empty tube design does not provide the optimum solution. As a result the heat transfer is limited and requires large surface areas. This is true for laminar flow in single phase heating or cooling applications but also under certain conditions in two phase applications.

hiTRAN wire matrix tube side enhancement can offer substantial improvement without penalty on pressure drop when designed correctly. The technology can be used for heat integration purposes without adding additional surface area but is also useful to eliminate bottlenecks in installed equipment and new design. Another area of application is the efficiency improvements of product air coolers; here substantial savings in terms of operating costs can be achieved. The paper gives an overview of the savings possible in different applications.