Shell-and-tube heat exchanger
class of heat exchanger designs
A shell-and-tube heat exchanger is a class of heat exchanger designs. It is the most common type of heat exchanger in oil refineries and other large chemical processes, and is suited for higher-pressure applications. As its name implies, this type of heat exchanger consists of a shell (a large pressure vessel) with a bundle of tubes inside it. One fluid runs through the tubes, and another fluid flows over the tubes (through the shell) to transfer heat between the two fluids. The set of tubes is called a tube bundle, and may be composed of several types of tubes: plain, longitudinally finned, etc.
Theory and application
Two fluids, of different starting temperatures, flow through the heat exchanger. One flows through all the tubes in parallel and the other flows outside the tubes, but inside the shell, typically in counterflow. Heat is transferred from one fluid to the other through the tube walls, either from tube side to shell side or vice versa. Cross-baffles can be used to force the shell fluid to flow perpendicularly across the tubes to develop a more turbulent flow, increasing the heat-transfer coefficient. The fluids can be either liquids or gases on either the shell or the tube side.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shell-and-tube heat exchanger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.