Exploiting Tube Inserts to Intensify Heat Transfer for the Retrofit of Heat Exchanger Networks Considering Fouling Mitigation

CATEGORY: HEAT EXCHANGERS
Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 2013, 52 (8), pp 2925–2943, DOI: 10.1021/ie303020m
Exploiting Tube Inserts to Intensify Heat Transfer for the Retrofit of Heat Exchanger Networks Considering Fouling Mitigation
Ming Pan *, Igor Bulatov , and Robin Smith
ming.pan@manchester.ac.uk
Centre for Process Integration, School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom
Abstract
Recent studies on heat-transfer intensification have shown that the use of tube inserts is an effective way of enhancing heat transfer while mitigating fouling deposition in shell-and-tube exchangers. Consequently, this intensification technique has been used for the retrofit of heat exchanger networks (HENs) in the process industry.
Authors present a novel optimization method to address fouling effects for HEN retrofit problems. The method calls for tube inserts to be implemented to increase the heat-transfer coefficients of intensified exchangers. An actual detailed tube-side fouling model is applied to calculate the tube-side fouling resistance in each heat exchanger. This usually leads to very large complex computational problems because of the combination of the HEN retrofit model and the exchanger fouling model. To reduce the resulting nonlinear computational difficulties, the optimization procedures proposed by Pan et al. were developed and updated based on retrofit scenarios. In a case study, the retrofit of a practical industrial process was studied to demonstrate the validity and soundness of the proposed approach, showing that the benefit derived from implementing tube inserts is not only increased heat recovery but also prolonged exchanger operating times through the mitigation of fouling deposition.
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