DESIGN OF A SHELL AND TUBE HEAT EXCHANGER

Chemical Engineering

Often, in process industries the feed stream has to be preheated before being sent to the process unit (reactor or distillation column) and the product stream has to be cooled before being sent for storage. In order to minimize heat losses and maximize energy efficiency, the heat removed from the product stream is provided to the feed stream as preheat. This is done with the help of heat exchangers in process industries. Many different types of heat exchangers are available depending on the need of operation; however, shell and tube heat exchangers are by far the most commonly used heat exchangers. In this work, the design of a counter current shell and tube heat exchanger used in nitric acid plants has been presented. The design work has been done considering the desired capacity of the plant, which is 100 tons/day of nitric acid. Two different methods, Kern’s method and Bell’s method, have been used for the design. Bell’s method was found to be more accurate as the overall heat transfer coefficient calculated by Bell’s method was close to the assumed value. Further, the design of auxiliary parts of the heat exchanger such as flanges, gaskets, bolts, supports and saddles have also been presented.

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