Heat Transfer

Equipment
Some Industrial Applications
Teo Chee Seng
17 Feb 2015

Agenda
Types of Heat Exchangers
Typical Applications in Oil refinery
Cryogenic applications in LNG industry
Design
Operations
Vendors
Practical aspects

Types of HXs

HXs can be broadly divided by the following

applications
Heat exchange eg. Cold crude oil versus hot
column residue
Boilers eg. Steam reboilers, distillation column
reboilers
Cooler eg. Water coolers, air fin coolers
Chillers eg. Chilled water coolers
Cryogenic eg. Propane refrigeration coolers, air
separation HXs

Typical Applications in oil

refinery
Shell and Tube (S&T) HXs are the majority
Water coolers trim coolers or rundown
coolers
Air cooled HXs distillation column
condensers
Steam heaters reboilers or preheater
Hot oil heaters closed loop process
heating

Preheat Train Simplified Flow

Scheme in CDU

Crude Pre-heat network

Preheat Train
Heat transfer through S&T HXs
Design of heat exchange network is
optimised by matching temperature level
considering

o application of pinch technology in design

o spiral heat inserts; special baffles

Efficiency of network has an impact on unit

throughput and fuel consumption

o application of online chemical cleaning

o optimization of cleaning schedule

Cryogenic Applications eg. LNG

Plate exchangers in LNG plants, air separation
units
Spool wound heat exchangers in LNG
liquefaction plants
Printed circuit exchangers in offshore platforms
Propane kettles characterized by narrow
temperature approaches
In LNG terminals, LNG is vaporised into natural
gas using vaporisers (ORVs or SCVs)

ORV Open Rack Vaporisers

SCV Submerged Combustion Vaporisers

Typical LNG Receiving Terminal Flow

Scheme
Flare /
Vent

Second
Metering
Station etc.

BOG
Compressor
Recondenser

LNG Tanks

Vaporiser
s

LNG Carrier
In-tank
Pumps

HP
Pumps

Utilities

Metering
Station

BTU adjustment /
odorisation

Open Rack Vaporizer

ORV conceptional flow

10

Open Rack Vaporizer

Submerged Combustion Vaporizer Ext View

12

Submerged Combustion Vaporizer Int View

13

ACHEs
Banks of Air Cooled Heat Exchangers are
used as condensers in baseload LNG
liquefaction plants
http://www.gea-heatexchangers.com/product
s/finned-tube-heat-exchangers/air-fin-coo
lers-for-oil-and-gas/

Spool Wound HX

Aluminium HX for enhanced

heat transfer
Very specialised equipment
for Air/NG liquefaction

Design : General Considerations

Service fouling / corrosive?
Temperature difference / approach
Allowable/available pressure drop
O&M philosophy
Applicable codes and regulations
CAPEX / OPEX

Overall Heat Transfer

Coefficients

Note the
lower
OHTC for
gas-gas
HX

HX TEMA classification

Design Codes

Common S&T

Fixed Tubesheet
(TEMA type
BEM)
Cheap and easy
construction
Tubes fixed on
both ends; tube
external not
accessible for
cleaning

U tube (TEMA
type BEU)
Good for large
differential Ts
Limited internal
tube cleaning

Common S&T

Floating Head (TEMA

type BES)
Allow access to shell &
tube external for cleaning
Good for large dTs
Expensive

Kettle Reboiler
Meant for vaporising
medium either heating
eg. Distillation column
bottom reboilers or
chilling like propane
refrigerant
Vapour space allows
liquid and gas separation

Plate type HE
A

A) PCHE
B) Plate Fin type
Often applied for narrow
temperature differences and
clean services like air, N2,
natural gas etc

Operations : Process Monitoring

(I)

Typical task for process engineer is to monitor the effectiveness of

heat exchange network
WHY?
Lower efficiency means increased firing in furnaces leading to more burning
more fuel and higher costs
Efficiency reduces with time due to fouling

How to monitor?
Trending the overall heat transfer coefficient of individual HXs or groups of
HXs
There is no OHTC meter! OHTC has to be back calculated based on
temperatures and flowrates
An alternative is to monitor the fouling factors essentially the same principle
as OHTC
normalisation to the right flowrates and temperature is important as
differernt flowrates and temperature can have significant effect on OHTC
calculations

Decide when to clean and what to clean!

Example : Preheat Train

Key process parameters to monitor are

o Furnace Inlet Temperature
o Individual exchanger heat transfer coefficient
trends
o Individual exchanger delta P
Pix showing tube internal cleaning of the tube
bundle

Operations : Process Monitoring

(II)
For water coolers and air coolers, there are often no
flowmeters and temperature meters on the
air/water side
Monitoring is often by setting a baseline eg after a
maintenance shutdown when equipment is clean
Troubleshooting is often via hand held meters like
an IR meter to gauge the temperature of the
process / portable ultrasonic flowmeters for water
flow measurement
Comparison against design values often give good
clues to current performance process models on
rating mode is very useful

Vendors
S&T HXs equipment are no longer
considered specialized equipment and there
are many vendors in the world
Brazed aluminum plate exchangers are
more specials Chart industries/Linde are
two of the leading vendors
Printed circuit HX is a special small form
factor compact HX offered by Heatric
SWHE specialised HX offered by
APCI/Linde for cryogenic applications

Practical Aspects

Heat exchangers are crucial pieces of equipment in

maintaining unit throughput and optimizing fuel
efficiency
O&M know how and considerations like space
requirements, cleaning schedule, valving
arrangements, flushing, fouling etc need to be
considered in the initial design
Relevant experience is important in choice of HX to
be applied
Trend is towards more online cleaning, nonintrusive monitoring and process monitoring via
simulation

Some links
Movie on heat exchanger incident at the
Tesoro refinery
https://www.htri.net/
http://www.tema.org/
Prices