heat exchanger (redirected from Heat excahnger)

heat exchanger

Any of several devices that transfer heat from a hot to a cold fluid. In many engineering applications, one fluid needs to be heated and another cooled, a requirement economically accomplished by a heat exchanger. In double-pipe exchangers, one fluid flows inside the inner pipe, and the other in the annular space between the two pipes. In shell-and-tube exchangers, many tubes are mounted inside a shell; one fluid flows in the tubes and the other flows in the shell, outside the tubes. Special-purpose devices such as boilers, evaporators, superheaters, condensers, and coolers are all heat exchangers. Heat exchangers are used extensively in fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants, gas turbines, heating and air conditioning, refrigeration, and the chemical industry. See also cooling system.

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heat exchanger [′hēt iks‚chānj·ər]

(engineering)

Any device, such as an automobile radiator, that transfers heat from one fluid to another or to the environment. Also known as exchanger.

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Heat exchanger

A device used to transfer heat from a fluid flowing on one side of a barrier to another fluid (or fluids) flowing on the other side of the barrier.

When used to accomplish simultaneous heat transfer and mass transfer, heat exchangers become special equipment types, often known by other names. When fired directly by a combustion process, they become furnaces, boilers, heaters, tube-still heaters, and engines. If there is a change in phase in one of the flowing fluids—condensation of steam to water, for example—the equipment may be called a chiller, evaporator, sublimator, distillation-column reboiler, still, condenser, or cooler-condenser.

Heat exchangers may be so designed that chemical reactions or energy-generation processes can be carried out within them. The exchanger then becomes an integral part of the reaction system and may be known, for example, as a nuclear reactor, catalytic reactor, or polymerizer.

Heat exchangers are normally used only for the transfer and useful elimination or recovery of heat without an accompanying phase change. The fluids on either side of the barrier are usually liquids, but they may also be gases such as steam, air, or hydrocarbon vapors; or they may be liquid metals such as sodium or mercury. Fused salts are also used as heat-exchanger fluids in some applications.

Most often the barrier between the fluids is a metal wall such as that of a tube or pipe. However, it can be fabricated from flat metal plate or from graphite, plastic, or other corrosion-resistant materials of construction.

Heat exchangers find wide application in the chemical process industries, including petroleum refining and petrochemical processing; in the food industry, for example, for pasteurization of milk and canning of processed foods; in the generation of steam for production of power and electricity; in nuclear reaction systems; in aircraft and space vehicles; and in the field of cryogenics for the low-temperature separation of gases. Heat exchangers are the workhorses of the entire field of heating, ventilating, air-conditioning, and refrigeration. See Conduction (heat), Convection (heat), Cooling tower, Evaporator, Heat transfer, Vapor condenser