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A heat exchanger is a piece of equipment built for efficient heat transfer from one medium to another. The media may be separated by a solid wall, so that they never mix, or they may be in direct contact. They are widely used in space heating, refrigeration, air conditioning, power plants, chemical plants, petrochemical plants, petroleum refineries, natural gas processing, and sewage treatment. One common example of a heat exchanger is the radiator in a car, in which the heat source, being a hot engine-cooling fluid, water, transfers heat to air flowing through the radiator (i.e. the heat transfer medium).
A heat exchanger is one piece of equipment designed for efficient heat transfer from one medium to another. The media can be separated by a solid wall, so that they never mix, or they may be in direct contact. They are widely used in heating, refrigeration, air conditioning, power plants, chemical plants, petrochemical plants, oil refineries, natural gas, and wastewater treatment. A common example of a heat exchanger is the radiator in a car in which the heat source, to be a hot engine coolant, water, heat transfer to air flowing through the radiator (that is to say the transfer medium heat).
Types of heat exchangers
Shell and tube heat exchanger
Plate heat exchanger
Adiabatic heat exchanger wheel
Plate heat exchanger fin
Pillow plate heat exchanger
Fluid heat exchangers
Heat recovery units
Dynamic scraped surface heat exchanger
Heat exchangers phase change
Industry
Heat exchangers are widely used in industry for both cooling and heating on a large scale industrial processes. The type and size of the heat exchanger used can be adapted to agree on a process based on the type of fluid, its phase, temperature, density, viscosity, pressure, chemical composition and thermodynamic properties of various others.
In many industrial processes there is waste of energy or heat flow is exhausted, heat exchangers can be used to recover the heat and put it to use by heating another stream in the process. This practice saves a lot of money in the industry as the heat supplied to other flows from heat exchangers, otherwise come from an external source that is more costly and harmful to the environment.
Heat exchangers are used in many industries, some of which include:
Wastewater Treatment
Refrigeration systems
Wine-brewery industry
Oil industry
In wastewater treatment industry, heat exchangers play a vital role in maintaining optimal temperatures in anaerobic digesters in order to promote the growth of microbes that remove pollutants from wastewater. Common types of heat exchangers used in this application are the double tube heat exchanger and plate and frame heat exchanger.
