There is more than just one kind of heat exchanger. Depending on what you intend to use it for, you will find that there are plenty of options when it comes to these temperature control mechanisms. Highly industrialized uses would necessitate more rugged and powerful heat exchangers. Some of the different types of heat exchangers are shell and tube heat exchangers, plate heat exchangers, adiabatic wheel heat exchangers, plate fin heat exchangers, pillow plate heat exchangers, fluid heat exchangers, waste heat recovery units, dynamic scraped surface heat exchanger, and phase-change heat exchangers. Even when there are advantages and disadvantages to using any which one of these heat exchangers, the shell and tube heat exchanger remains to be the most popular and most widely used. These heat exchangers are considered to be more efficient, more economical, and more convenient.
Shell and tube heat exchangers are best used for industrial operations involving high pressure and chemical exposure. Chemical plants and oil refineries are known to be heavy users of this kind of heat exchangers. Any industrial application that require a heat exchanger would do well to have an engineer compute for his required heat exchanger design in order to have a shell and tube heat exchanger fabricated to the exact specifications that would result in the best efficiency ratios for his usage. There are a lot of information about these heat exchangers online non-technical people can read through to get an idea of what a heat changer does and what particular type would work best for particular usages. It is, however, best to leave the decision as to which heat exchanger type to use to the experts. There are a lot of considerations in determining the kind of configuration in heat exchangers that would result in the best efficiency level. In some cases, a combination of heat exchange mechanisms is used for optimal results.
In as far as shell and tube heat exchangers are used, several factors are taken into consideration when choosing the kind of tubing. These are: diameter, thickness, and length. The diameter of the tubes enclosed in the exchanger could vary. Owing to its size, smaller diameter tubes are more compact. The fluid in the tubes are easily heated or cooled. This kind of tube, however, is harder to clean and is prone to dirt accumulation. Bigger tube diameters are preferred as the wear out less easily. Tubes that are thicker are also preferred as they are more resistant to extreme temperature changes that they are put through. Longer, in shell and tube heat exchangers, is definitely better as it provides a number of economic advantages. Whatever tubing design is used would depend greatly on what the heat exchanger will be used for. There are generally two types of heat exchangers – the U-tube heat exchanger and the straight-tube heat exchanger. Of these two, the U-tube heat exchanger is the one that is used in nuclear power plants as pressurized water reactors. Double phase shell and tube heat exchangers, on the other hand, are handy in applications like steam turbines where condensing steam is heated back into gas to make the turbines rotate and generate power.