CHAPTER 1

General Statements
To remain competitive, companies have to consider thermal energy savings
and the reduction of cooling water consumption in their production
processes. To achieve these goals, the implementation of heat recovery
equipment and air-cooled heat exchangers is required.
It is well known that when the external fluid is a gas (air, natural gas,
exhaust gases, etc.) in heat exchangers, low convection coefficients are
obtained; this means that to increase heat exchange, extended surfaces
should be used. These surfaces are fabricated as finned tube banks and
become the core of gasegas and gaseliquid type heat exchangers, such as
heat recovery and air-cooled equipment.
The heat recovery equipment takes advantage of the thermal energy
contained in the exhaust gases from combustion processes. In a combined
cycle power plant, exhaust gas from gas turbines is used to generate steam in
a heat recovery boiler. Other examples of this kind of equipment are the
steam generator economizers and air preheaters that are widely used in
industry. Thus, heat recovery increases the energy efficiency of thermal
systems and reduces the emissions of greenhouse gases.
In recent decades, due to the increasing shortage of water for both
human consumption and industrial uses, air-cooled heat exchange equip-
ment is having increasing application. The aircooled heat exchangers are
used in refineries, power plants, and for cooling products in chemical, food,
and paper industries. The air-cooled condenser is one of the most used;
they are installed in combined cycle power plants to condense the steam
from one or more steam turbines.
Finned tubes are the heart of any gasegas or gaseliquid type of heat
exchanger. Finned tube banks are compact units of robust and corrosion-
resistant construction. The type of finned tube is chosen (ie, the fin type and
combination of materials) depending on the specific requirements of each
process equipment unit. Commonly, tubes currently have circular or helical fins.

1.1 GEOMETRIC CHARACTERISTICS

Convective heating surfaces with circular, square, or helical fins represent
tube bundles or tube banks with staggered or in-line arrangement of tubes
in cross-flow. Bundles are fabricated from straight tubes, finned beforehand
Handbook for Transversely Finned Tube Heat Exchanger Design
ISBN 978-0-12-804397-4 © 2016 Elsevier Ltd.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-804397-4.00001-X All rights reserved. 1
through welding by high-frequency currents or in any other manufacturing
process. Geometric characteristics of finned tubes are presented in Fig. 1.1.
Steps between tubes in in-line and staggered arrangements are shown in
Fig. 1.2.

(A)
δr D

d
Lr

r1
d in
δT

sr

δr
Csq
(B) d
Lr

r1

din
δT

sr
δr D
(C)
Lr

d
Sr

Figure 1.1 Geometric characteristics of finned tubes: (A) tube with circular fins;
(B) tube with square fins; and (C) tube with helical fins.

(A) (B)
u u

S1 S1
S2

S2
S ,
2

Figure 1.2 Spacing characteristics of bundles of finned tubes: (A) staggered

arrangement; and (B) in-line arrangement.