A probabilistic fouling and cost model for plate-and-frame heat exchangers

Abstract

SUMMARYFouling in plate-and-frame heat exchangers (PHEs) may be defined as the deposition of unwanted material on the heat transfer surface that reduces heat-transfer and increases the resistance to fluid flow. Once the thermal-hydraulic performance decreases to a minimum acceptable level, cleaning of the equipment has to be done to restore the performance. The decision regarding periodic off-line maintenance of the heat exchangers is generally based on a thermal-economic performance of the process. In this paper, we discuss a probabilistic maintenance model for PHE by incorporating the risk level and scatter parameter of the four random fouling growth models, namely linear, power law, falling rate and asymptotic models, which are integrated in the dimensionless cost model for a heat exchanger used in a steel plant. All the results are presented in terms of non-dimensional plots. The results show that there is a strong relationship between t down and the uptime, particularly in the region where the costs of operation and maintenance are minimum.

Air-side heat transfer and friction characteristics of biofouled evaporator under wet conditions

“…There have been a lot of publications on the effects of air dust deposition fouling, such as experimental studies on the effects of particle quantities on the performance of evaporators [1,2], experimental studies on the relations between particle size and the deposited dust quantities [3,4], and modeling deposition of fouling particles [5][6][7].…”

Joint economic optimization of heat exchanger design and maintenance policy

“…Often, probabilistic design methods are also employed to account for hardly predictable fouling effects [59][60][61].…”

Numerical analysis of thermal performance of heat exchanger: Different plate structures and fluids

“…Gherasim et al [26,27] experimentally investigated the frictional factor and Nusselt number in a HE then extended it numerically for the assessment of laminar and two equation turbulent models by comparing the simulation results with the experimental ones. The deposition of unwanted material is easy to be clean which decreased the heat transfer rate [28][29][30].…”