CDB 3044: PROCESS PLANT DESIGN

Equipment Design - Heat Exchangers (2)

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 General Design Considerations

Fluid allocation: Shell Side or Tube Side

Where no phase change occurs, the following factors will determine
the allocation of the fluid streams to the shell or tubes:

 Corrosion: The more corrosive fluid should be allocated to the

tube-side. This will reduce the cost of expensive alloy or clad
components.

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 General Design Considerations

Fouling: The fluid that has the greatest tendency to foul the heat-
transfer surfaces should be placed in the tube side.

• This will give better control over the design fluid velocity.

• The higher allowable velocity in the tubes will reduce fouling.

• The tubes will be easier to clean.

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 General Design Considerations
 Operating pressures: The higher pressure stream should be allocated
to the tube-side. High-pressure tubes will be cheaper than a high-
pressure shell.

 Pressure drop: For the same pressure drop, higher heat-transfer

coefficients will be obtained on the tube-side than the shell-side. Fluid
with the lowest allowable pressure drop should be allocated to the
tube-side.

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 General Design Considerations
 Viscosity: Generally, a higher heat-transfer coefficient will be
obtained by allocating the more viscous material to the shell-side,
providing the flow is turbulent.

If turbulent flow cannot be achieved in the shell it is better to place

the fluid in the tubes, as the tube-side heat-transfer coefficient can be
predicted with more certainty.

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 General Design Considerations

 Stream flow-rates: Allocating the fluids with the lowest flow-rate

to the shell-side will normally give the most economical design.

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 Shell and Tube Fluid Velocities
 High velocities will give high heat-transfer coefficients but also a high-
pressure drop.

 The velocity must be high enough to prevent any suspended solids

settling, but not so high as to cause erosion.

 High velocities will reduce fouling.

 Liquids: Tube-side, process fluids: 1 to 2 m/s, maximum 4 m/s if

required to reduce fouling; water: 1.5 to 2.5 m/s.

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 Shell and Tube Fluid Velocities

 Shell-side: 0.3 to 1 m/s.

 Vapors: the velocity used will depend on the operating pressure and
fluid density.

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 Fluid Physical Properties Required for HE Design
 Density
 Viscosity
 Thermal conductivity
 Temperature-Enthalpy correlations (specific and latent heats)
 Thermal conductivities of commonly used tube materials

In the correlations used to predict heat-transfer coefficients, the physical

properties are usually evaluated at the mean stream temperature.

This is satisfactory when the temperature change is small, but can cause a
significant error when the change in temperature is large.

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Thermal Conductivity of Metals

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 Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger
 Tube-sheet layout (tube count)
 The bundle diameter will depend not only on the number of tubes but
also on the number of tube passes, as spaces must be left in the pattern
of tubes on the tube sheet to accommodate the pass partition plates
n1
D 
N t  K1  b 
 d0 
1 n1
N 
Db  d 0  t 
 K1 
where,
N t  number of tubes
Db  bundle diameter, mm
d 0  tube outside diameter, mm
where Pt = tube pitch, mm

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Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger

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Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger

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15
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 Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger
c
  
Tube side heat transfer coefficient Nu  C Re a Pr b 
 

 w 
and pressure drop: Single phase hd 
where, Nu  Nusselt number   i e 
 k 
 f 
 Heat transfer (turbulent flow):  ρut d e   Gt d e 
Re  Reynolds number   μ  
 

   μ 
 Cp μ 
Heat-transfer data for turbulent flow Pr  Prandtl number   
 k 
 f 
inside conduits of uniform cross- hi  inside coefficient
section are usually correlated by an d e  equivalent or hydraulic mean diameter, m
equation of the form: 4  cross sectional area for flow
de   d i for tubes
wetted perimeter
ut  fluid velocity, m/s
k f  fluid thermal conductivity, W/moC
Gt  mass velocity, mass flow per unit area, kg/m2s
μ  fluid viscosity at the bulk fluid temperature,
μw  fluid viscosity at the wall Ns/m2

C p  fluid specific heat,J/kgoC 17

 Tube Side Heat Transfer Coefficient

a  0.8, b  0.3 for cooling and b  0.4 for heat

c  0.14
Sieder and Tate (1936), A general eq for exchanger design
0.14
  
Nu  C Re 0.8
Pr 0.33
 
 w 
where,
C  0.021 for gases
 0.023 for non - viscous liquids
 0.027 for viscou s liquids

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 Tube Side Heat Transfer Coefficient
Laminar flow

Below a Reynolds number of about 2000 the flow in pipes will be laminar.

Providing the natural convection effects are small, which will normally be so in
forced convection, the following equation can be used to estimate the film heat-
transfer coefficient:
0.14
0.33  d e   
Nu  1.86Re Pr    
 L   w 
where, L is the length of the tube (m)
If Nu  3.5 and assume Nu  3.5

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 Tube Side Heat Transfer Factor
Heat-transfer factor, jh
 It is often convenient to correlate heat-transfer data in terms of a heat transfer j
factor.

 The heat-transfer factor is defined by:

0.14
  
jh  St Pr 0.67
 
 w 
 More convenient form is given by:
0.14
hi d i 0.33   
 jh Re Pr  
kf  w 

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 Tube Side Heat Transfer Coefficient
 Kern (1950), and other workers, define the heat transfer factor as
0.14
  
jH  Nu Pr 1 3
 
 w 

 The relationship between jh and jH is given by

jH  jh Re

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 Tube Side Heat Transfer Coefficient
Tube-side heat transfer factor

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 Tube Side Heat Transfer Coefficient
Heat transfer coefficient for highly viscous fluids:

hi t w  t   U T  t 
where,
t  tube side bulk tempe rature (mean)
t w  estimated wall temperatu re
T  shell side bulk tempe rature (mean)

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 Tube Side Heat Transfer Coefficient
Coefficients for water

 The equation below has been adapted from data given by Eagle and Ferguson (1930):

42001.35  0.02t ut0.8

hi 
d i0.2
where,
hi  inside coefficien t for water, W/m2oC

t  water tem perature,oC

ut  water vel ocity, m/s
d i  tube inside diameter, mm
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 Tube-Side Pressure Drop
There are two major sources of pressure loss on the tube-side of a shell and tube
exchanger:

• Friction loss in the tubes

• Losses due to the sudden contraction and expansion and flow
reversals that the fluid experiences in flow through the tube
arrangement.

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 Tube-Side Pressure Drop
 The tube friction loss can be calculated using the familiar equations for
pressure-drop loss in pipes. The basic equation for isothermal flow in pipes
(constant temperature) is:
 L  ut2
P  8 j f  
 di  2
Where, jf is the dimensionless friction factor, and L’ is the effective pipe length.

The flow in a heat exchanger will clearly not be isothermal, and this is allowed
for by including an empirical correction factor to account for the change in
physical properties with temperature. Normally, only the change in viscosity is
considered.

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Tube-Side Pressure Drop
Tube-side friction factors

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 Tube-Side Pressure Drop
m
 L  ut2   
P  8 j f    
 di  2  w 
m  0.25 for laminar flow, Re  2100
 0.14 for turbul ent flow, Re  2100

• The pressure losses due to contraction at the tube inlets, expansion at

the exits, and flow reversal in the headers, can be a significant part of
the total tube-side pressure drop.

• The loss in terms of velocity heads can be estimated by counting the

number of flow contractions, expansions and reversals, and using the
factors for pipe fittings to estimate the number of velocity heads lost.

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 Tube-Side Pressure Drop
For two tube passes,

There will be two contractions, two expansions and one flow reversal.
 The head loss for each of these effects is:

contraction 0.5, expansion 1.0, 180o bend 1.5

Hence, for two passes the maximum loss will be

2 × 0.5 + 2 × 1.0 + 1.5 = 4.5 velocity heads

= 2.25 per pass
Recommended value of 2.5 velocity heads per pass is the most realistic value
to use.

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 Tube-Side Pressure Drop
Pressure drop equation becomes,
  L   
m
 u 2
Pt  N p 8 j f     2.5 t

  d i   w   2
where,
ΔPt  tube side pressure drop (Pa)
N p  number of tube side passes
ut  tube side velocity, m/s
L  length of one tube

 Another source of pressure drop will be the flow expansion and contraction at
the exchanger inlet and outlet nozzles. This can be estimated by adding one
velocity head for the inlet and 0.5 for the outlet, based on the nozzle velocities

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 Shell Side Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop: Single Phase
Flow pattern:
 The flow pattern in the shell of a segmentally baffled heat exchanger is complex.
This makes the prediction of the shell-side heat-transfer coefficient and pressure drop
very much more difficult than for the tube-side.
 Though the baffles are installed to direct the flow across the tubes, the actual flow of
the main stream of fluid will be a mixture of cross flow between the baffles, coupled
with axial (parallel) flow in the baffle windows; as shown in Figure

Idealized main stream flow

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 Flow Pattern

 Not all the fluid flow follows the

path shown in the figure. Some
will leak through gaps formed by
the clearances that have to be
allowed for fabrication and
assembly of the exchanger. These
leakage and bypass streams are
shown in the figure, which is
based on the flow model
proposed by Tinker (1951, 1958).

Shell-side leakage and by-pass paths

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 Flow Pattern
 Stream A is the tube-to-baffle leakage stream. The fluid flowing
through the clearance between the tube outside diameter and the tube
hole in the baffle
 Stream B is the actual cross-flow stream.
 Stream C is the bundle-to-shell bypass stream. The fluid flows in
the clearance area between the outer tubes in the bundle (bundle
diameter) and the shell
 Stream E is the baffle-to-shell leakage stream. The fluid flowing
through the clearance between the edge of a baffle and the shell wall

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 Kern’s Method
The procedure for calculating the shell-side heat-transfer coefficient and
pressure drop for a single shell pass exchanger is given below:

 Calculate the area for cross-flow, As , for the hypothetical row of tubes
at the shell equator, given by:  p  d D l
A 
s
t 0 s B
pt
where,
pt  tube pitch
d 0  tube outside diameter
Ds  shell inside diameter, m
l B  baffle spacing, m
the term pt  d 0 pt is the ratio of
the clearance between tu bes and the
total distance between tu be centres

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 Kern’s Method
Calculate the shell-side mass velocity, Gs , and the linear velocity us :

Ws
Gs 
As
Gs
us 

where,
Ws  fluid flow rate on the shell - side kg/s
  shell - side fluid density, kg/m 3

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 Kern’s Method
Calculate the shell-side equivalent diameter (hydraulic diameter),
Figure 12.28.

 pt2  d 02 
For a square pitch arrangement: 4 
de   4
d 0
 
1.27 2
d0

pt  0.785d 02 

For an equilateral triangular pitch arrangement:

 pt 1 d 02 
4  0.87 pt   
de   4
d 0
2 4  1.10 2

d0

pt  0.917d 02 
2
where, d e  equivalent diameter, m
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 Kern’s Method
Calculate the shell-side Reynolds number, given by:
Gs d e us d e 
Re  
 
From Reynolds number, read the value of jh from Figure 12.29 for the
selected baffle cut and calculate the shell-side heat transfer coefficient hs
from:
0.14
hs d e 1 3  
Nu   jh Re Pr  
kf  w 

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 Kern’s Method
From shell-side Reynolds number, read the friction factor from
Figure 12.30 and calculate the shell-side pressure drop from:

0.14
 Ds   L   u   
2
Ps  8 j f   
s
 
 e  B 
d l 2 
 w
where,
L  tube length
lB  baffle spacing
the term  L lB  is the number of times the
flow crosses the tube bundl

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 Kern’s Method
Shell nozzle-pressure drop:
 The pressure loss in the shell nozzles will normally only be
significant with gases.

 The nozzle pressure drop can be taken as equivalent to 1.5 velocity

heads for the inlet and 0.5 for the outlet, based on the nozzle area or the
free area between the tubes in the row immediately adjacent to the
nozzle, whichever is the least.

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 References
1. Smith, R. Chemical Process: Design and Integration. Wiley, 2005.

2. Sinnott R. K. Chemical Engineering Design, Coulson &

Richardson’s Chemical Engineering Volume 6. 4th Ed. Oxford,
UK: Elsevier, 2006.

3. Peters M. S. and Timmerhaus K. D. Plant Design and Economics

for Chemical Engineers. 5th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003.

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