i PaO a ho Don’t Let Baffling Baffle You — Shellside design of shell-and-tube heat exchangers is complicated by various factors, including baffling. R. Mukherie. 72» APRIL%995 + CHEMICAL ENGINEERING PROGRESS nthe thermal design of shell-and-tube heat exchangers, calcu lations are performed separately forthe shellside and the tube- side, and the results are then merged to produce a design, Whereas the tubeside calculations are relatively straighttor ward, the shellside calculations are much more complex and re {quire u good understanding of the intricacies involved. OF the var ious shellside parameters. baffli This article will help the designer select the best bailing 99 as is the most crucial to produce an optimum heat exchanger dev Why the shellside is more complex son the shellside How patern, various Consider the various desig Shell xpes. Depending on the shells cilable, Figure 1 illustrates the configurations detined in the Tubular Exchanger Manutucturers Assoeiation (TEMA standards 1), Tube pate. The tube pitch isthe shortest distance between WO adjacent tubes, The elects of tube pitch design is discussed lat patter, Depend choose from amon; lypes oF shell contigueations the thermal nthe flows pattern desired. th lube layout patterns Tipe of buafles. Battles are used wy suppost tubes. produce the desired shellside Nuid velocity. and prevent failure of tubes due 9 Now-induced vibration, They are either ype. Plate baffles maty be st ‘oF triple-sezmental, The different tspes of hat Figure 3 Barile sprucing, Batlle spaci centerline distance between adjawent Raffles, This isa very erucial parameter in shell-and-t Bafle cut. Baffle cut is expressed ay the percentage of the shell inside diameter that is open 1 permit the Quid to low through the baile (Figure 4). This, too. is an important parame: ter tor exchanger design. but less crucial than the baffle spacing. ‘Consider also that on the shellside, there is not just one stream, as inside tubes, In the shell. there 1s one main cross-flow stream (designated B in Figure 5), as well as several leakage and bypass the plate type or rod mental. onble-segmental 2 heat exehunger designLit Cited 1, Prausnit J. M. "Molecular Themody- namics of Fd Phase Exulibia” Pren- ce Hall, Englewood Cliff. NJ. pp. 203-212 1969) 2 Ramalho, R. Sand J. Delmas, “Non Ideal Soluions: Excess Free Energy snd Acuity Coeficins from Toal Pressure Measurements” Can J. of Chem Eng. 462), pp. 32-36 (1968) 3. Van Winkle, M. “Disilation’” Mc Graw-Hill New Yor. 187 (1967). 4. Mani J. Cx and B. Cuony, “Measure: ment of Vapor-Liquid Eqailia withthe RCI: A Fist and Rehble Technique Without Sampling” presented at he Met ver RCI Usee Forum (Oct, 1989, ‘Repos avaiable trough Metter Tole do, Hightown, NI ratur pressure at constant values as the com position changes: so, some error will be added 10 our results, If the pressure is held constant, the temperature term in Eg, 3 will become an error in our as sumptions. and vice versa, The ette ‘of temperature on the enthalpy of Jiquid is much more significant than the effect of pressure on the mokir vol me wl the liquid, Therefore, the error si Ke mach smaller unaler eo scant-teimperature conditions. Ba under constant-pressure ones, So. 10 ie erTor, collect The data Under constant temperatuee conditions whenever possible, Mani and Cuony 14) desenbed simple these constant-temper: reaetion calorimeter that can be pre: grammed t@ BOK! & mistane at ie temper sure of the contents. They setup thei system to collect the «att by. pulling sacuum on the empty veysel at 100 C then cooling the vessel to SC and adding « known amount of cach oF the {wo components of interest. Nest, the mixture was held at the desired tem perature until the pressure achiewed Meady state. Then. the temperature war increased (0 the next value and held there until the pressure stabilized. This was done for as many temperatures as desired. Usually. only three or four id effective way te collect specif wre nd measure the pres emperatures were needed to create a good model, Then. the composition ‘was adjusted by adding more of the scarcer Component I. and the tempera: ture ramps were repeated. In this way. system pressures may be measured for several values of the mole % of Com ponent 1 in 2 ut various temperatures, To get the equivalent data for the other end of the seale, just start out with an excess of I and repeat the procedure by adding more 2 between each series of temperature ramps. The programming features of the reaction calorimeter allow the entire procedure to be auto- mated, with temperatures and compo- nent teed automatically being adjusted and pressures being recorded, All the experimenter has t0 do is sct up the system to collect the data at each end oof the concentration range. This will Provide a series of isothermal data sets tor the model analysis. No sampling or hemical analysis is required The results of analysis for one set of lata collected by Mani und Cuony by this metho! are shown in Table 3, Data ere taken at four different tempers: ares for each of five di nl COMPOSE he ammonia ater bins sm. In the original paper. both the our and the liquid phases of the s$s- ns being analyzed were assumed e nonideal and various thermody nam nodels were used t0 represent them, 's particular set of data Wats anal red NRTL model for the liguid pase sand the Ellerwald eation of Sate foe the ssipor phase, The total sures estimated by their resulting del fe shove in the gokamn "MC P°. Forall but one dita point. resilis of nalysis by the simplified metho pre “ented here matched the data s well as er than the rigorous analysis that auuired hnowsiedge of many’ pur sememt parameters sand 1 specialized um 49 do the f Once the partial pressures were esti- mated, 9, values were calculated from the ideal-gas vapor-phase model. The » alues wstimated by Mani and Cuony using the Ellerwald equation of state shown in the column labeled "M-C "These values are in good agree- CHEMICAL ENGINEERING PROGRESS + APRIL 1996 ¢ 77 ‘ment with the results of the simplified method, with differences increasing as the temperature and pressure rise. This shows that even with a highly nonideal system like ammonia/water, the as- sumption of ideality in the vapor phase Joes not introduce significant error at moderate temperatures and pressure. If one of the components being studied is a compound for which no vapor pressure data are available. these also can be obtained by use of a reac: tion calorimeter. Just charge the pure component into the system and mea: sure the pressure ata series of tempera tures as described above. The Antoine ‘equation then may be used (0 correlate the results and provide a vapor pres sure model for future work. A powerful tool By making a few simplifying as sumptions. it is possible w use a spreadsheet to analyze PT data and determine the PTxy data needed for Uistillation problems. lata are preferred, because hey introduce lower errors, These data may be gathered rather easily by use ot nable reuction calorimeter his met yminon sources of eeTor and insures data will be thermo- alysis of other wx eliminates the most H.ALREED i senor sat anges inthe Development Deparment ibs Carp s Piet Protection Oi St Gabi, LA SODA 124 Fa OSD 118 Hehas mores freee ‘yar wth provers madeing psc! pepery generavan ond eralutin ona process enrol He aos the sytem manager tr Seporrarts corpus ator Cotety Me song efucteter oe going om hn nb oh i par dos Ealleeion ana tecaciatan ora mater balance onthe man procucten unit onthe plant so, nd sof arb aosergin fr fftuorrestment and ealenm oni crying forwet races seams Hereceved 385 fom the Un of Kaas and sn MS am Lamar, bin inshemcal engresig. He ita member of ACNETwo-Poss St ween Lngtucina Bate Set lr fovied (e0seo) | deg) Triangular | Sauare Rotates (sues) Square | ($409) | WM Figure 1, TEMA designations for shelland-tube hheat exchangers. W Figure 2 Tube lavout patterns stream, These include a bunule-to-shell bypass stream (C), 3 huaffle-to-shell leakage stream (E), a tube-to-batfle leak: sam ‘A), and a pass-parttion bypass stream ¢F) Teno becomes quite cleat ashy the shellside design is ‘much more difficul than the mheside d Baffle spacing TEMA states that the minimum halile spacing should by cone-tifth of the shell inside diameter or 2 in.. whichever is greater, Closer batfle spacing will result in poor bundle pene Tration by the shellside uid as well as difficulty in cleaning the i Considering thermall performance, however, is fegommend, cod that butlle spacine should not be less than 30° oF the shell ‘outside Surtace of the tubes by mechanical means inside diameter, as lower vtlues result mn excessive lakaze un hy pass sean The miavinuny battle spacing is the shell inside diameter Higher boitle spacing will lead to predominantly longitudinal Mow, which is fess efficient than crossflow and will lead 16 poor heat ransfer. by addition, large unsupported tube spans will result in the exchanger being prone t failure due to flow-induced vibration, For turbulent flow on the shellsde. the heat-tr to the 0.6-0.7 power of velocity. whereas pres: sure drop ‘aries to the |.7-2.0 power, For laminar flow. the exponents are 0.33 for velocity and 1.0 for pressure drop. It follows. theretore, that as baffle spacing is decreased, the pressure drop increases much faster than does the heat-irans ler coetticient star coer ficient CHEMICAL ENGINEERING PROGRESS * APRIL 1996 © 73