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Paper from: Advanced Computational Methods in Heat Transfer, B Sunden and CA Brebbia (Editors).
ISBN 1-85312-906-2

Dynamic behaviour of heat exchangers

W. Roetzel', M. Li2%C X . Luo',~

'Institute of Thermodynamics,
University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, Germany
'Institute of Thermal Engineering,
University of Shanghaifor Science and Technology,China

Abstract
Although a lot of models for modeling and simulation of dynamic behaviour of
heat exchangers were suggested, they wereonly for specified types of heat
exchangers. In the present investigation a general model for dynamic analysis of
one-dimensional flow heat exchangers is developed. Dynamic responses to
arbitrary temperature transients belong to linear problems and can be solved
exactly. For small disturbances in thermal flow rates, heat transfer coefficients or
flow distribution factors a linearized model is developed. The solutions are
obtained by means of Laplace transform and FFT (fast Fourier transform) inverse
technique. By introducing the matching matrices, the above solutions become
general and can be applied not only to multistream multipass shell-and-tube heat
exchangers and plate heat exchangers but also to their networks. The time delays
in connecting pipes are included in the models. Based on the analytical and
numerical analyses the dynamic parameters of heat exchangers usedfor
automatic control of systems are evaluated.

1 Introduction
As parts of a system, heat exchangers are widely used i n industry and frequently
undergo transients resulting from external load variations and regulations. I n
many industrial processes and operations, such as in nuclear reactors, power
plants and chemical processes, precise simulations of the transient responses of
heat exchangers are required. Optimal operation, treatment of accidents and real-
time control and regulation also demand more accurate description of the time-
domain behaviour of heat exchangers. Since the first dynamic model presented
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Paper from: Advanced Computational Methods in Heat Transfer, B Sunden and CA Brebbia (Editors).
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and solved by Anzelius [ l ] for the heat transfer between a porous medium and a
fluid flowing through it, many studies have been made. A review ofnew
developments in dynamic analysis of heat exchangers was made by Roetzel [2].
The theoretical fundamentals, mathematical modeling and numerical simulations
of the dynamic behaviour of heat exchangers can be found in the book of Roetzel
and Xuan [3].
Recent developments in mathematical modeling and simulation of dynamics
of heat exchangers includes: single-blow model for plate-fin heat exchangers [4]
and that considering longitudinal conductioddispersion effect [S]; dynamic
model for heat exchanger systems coupled by circulating streams [6]; lumped,
distributed and lumped-distributed parameter models for plate-fh heat
exchangers [7]. In the present paper a general model for one-dimensional flow
heat exchangers is proposed and solved by the useof Laplace transform and
numerical inverse algorithm. A simplified form of transfer functions resulting
from a lumped parameter model is suggested to predict the temperature responses
of heat exchangers, in which the parameters are determined by experimental data
or the results of the distributed parameter model.

2 A general mathematical model for one-dimensional flow

multichanneVmultistream heat exchangers and their networks
For a general one-dimensional flow heat exchanger with N streams, M fluid
channels and M, solid walls, the governing equation system can be written as,

W~+w%~u..(tw,j-t;) (i=l, . . - , M ) ,
' dT ' dx j=1

T = 0 : ti = g j ( x ) ( i = I , .-., M ) , tW,j= s , , , , ~ ( x ) ( j = I, .-., M _ ) , (3)

in which W,and Wwjare heat capacities of fluid i and wall j , k$ is thermal flow
rate of fluid i and U , is heat transfer parameter a F / L between fluid i and wall j .
To specify the boundary conditions in a general form, three matching matrices
are introduced and defined as follows.
(a) Interchannel matching matrix G:
It is an M X M matrix whose elements gy are defined as the ratio of the
thermal flow rate flowing from channel j into channel i to that flowing
through channel i.
(b) Entrance matching matrix G' :
It is an M X N matrix whose elements g,; are defined as the ratio ofthe
thermal flow rate flowing from the entrance of stream k to channel i to that
flowing through channel i.
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Advancd Compututiod Mcthods in H a t Trunsf~r 453

(c) Exit matching matrix G" :

It is an N X M matrix whose elements , g ;are defined as the ratio of the
thermal flow rate flowing from channel i to the exit of stream k to that flowing
out of the exit of stream k.
According to the energy balances at the entrances of M channels, the
boundary conditions can be written as,

in which x; and .
x:
are the coordinates of the entrance and exit of channel i,
respectively. t; is the supply temperature of stream k . AT; and Aqi are the time
delays between the entrance of stream k and the entrance of channel i and those
between the exit of channel j and the entrance of channel i, respectively.
Similarly, the energy balance at the exits of N streams reads,

where AT: is the time delay between the exit of channel i and that of stream k.
In the analysis, the following assumptions are made. (i) The mass flow rate
and fluid temperature in each channel are considered as uniform over the cross-
section perpendicular to the flow direction (plug-flow). (ii) The longitudinal heat
conduction in the solid wall is neglected. (iii) There is no lateral heat resistances
across the walls. (iv) There is no heat loss to the environment. (v) The properties
of the fluids and wall materials are constant.

2.1 Dynamic responseto inlet temperature disturbances

Consider a heat exchanger which runs at first at a steady state, of which all the
parameters and temperatures are specified with the symbol """. The steady-state
6
temperature distributions were obtained by Roetzel and Luo [8] as follows,

.i.&+fi,, (6)

inwhich ? = [i,,i2,... , i M I T is the vector of steady-state fluid temperature

distributions in channels, e h = diag[ e i x ) is a diagonal matrix and ii(i = 1, ...,

M) are the eigenvalues of coefficient matrix of the governing equation system,
A , whose elements read,
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in which the Kronecker symbol c& is defined as S, = {Lo,

i = j . H is an

M X M square matrix whose columns are the eigenvectors of the corresponding

eigenvalues. V' and V" are two M X M matrices defined as,
+! = (c;) = {hjeiji'] , +'~=(1?,:) ={itieijF~] , (8)
M X M M X M MxM M X M

respectively. The coefficient vector D is determined by the supply temperature

vector of streams T f = [t;', F;, ... , c l T as,
j j = ( ~ . - q - l & ~ .
(9)

Eqn (6) is valid only if the eigenvalues differ from each other. A practical method
to avoid multiple eigenvalues is to add small deviations to the thermal flow rates
q. Such small deviations have almost no effect on the results.
For z > 0, the exchanger experiences arbitrary changes in the inlet fluid
temperatures. Introducing the excess temperatures
q =ti -<. , = t,",j- f h . , j, (10)
the governing equation system reads,

z=o: q=o ( i = l , ..., M), 6!w,j=o ( j = l , ..., M,), (13)

~ ( ~ , x , ! ) + < ( x ~~)~=; [ H ; ( . i - a a ; ) + i ; ] + ~ ~ q [ q ( + - A ~ ~ , . ; . ) + i l ( . : ) ]
k=l j=1

(i = I, ..-, M ) , (14)

e ; ~ z ) + i ; . = ~ g ; : [ ~ ( z - A z ~ , ~ : ' ) + i( ,k(=~ l~, ]-.., N ) . (15)

i=l

Applying the Laplace transform to eqns (1 l)-( 15), we have,

with the boundary conditions

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Advancc.d Compututiod Mcthods in H a t Trumfc.r 455

To obtain the analytical solution ofeqn (1 6) inthe Laplace plane, it is

convenient to rewrite eqn (1 6) into the matrix form,

!!!LA@, (19)
dx

in which 6 = [G, 6,..., &,lT. According to the theory of linear algebra the
general solution of eqn (19) is obtained in the matrix form as,

~ = H P D , (20)
where A = contains the eigenvalues of A, the coefficient matrix of eqn
(16). H contains the eigenvectors of A. The coefficient vector D in eqn (20) is
determined by substitution of eqn (20) into eqn (17), yielding,
D = (V’- cV”)-’i;t’@/ (21)
in which

(22)

V“ = {v;}MxM= ( $ e + q x l L I . (23)

?; , e’and c’’
are matching matrices with time delay, whose elements are
given by gije-A9s , gLemAckS and g,”eeA@ , respectively.
The exit temperature vector of streams is obtained from eqn (1S>,
@U = G,”v”D= &tV”(V! - i;tvyi;t@! ,
(24)

2.2 Dynamic response to flow disturbances

Consider a heat exchanger which runs at first at a steady state, then the exchanger
experiences flow and inlet temperature disturbances. The former will result in
disturbances in thermal flow rates F, heat transfer parameters Uv and flow
distributions gv, glk and g: . It is further assumed that (i) the time delays i n the
connecting pipes keep constant during the flow disturbances and (ii) heat
capacities of connecting pipes are negligible. If these two assumptions cannot be
© 2002 WIT Press, Ashurst Lodge, Southampton, SO40 7AA, UK. All rights reserved.
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ISBN 1-85312-906-2

satisfied for some connecting pipes, they can alternatively be treated as additional
channels of the exchanger or exchanger network.
The governing equation system for flow disturbances is non-linear.
Linearization of eqns (1)-(5) yields,

(i 1, . - - ,M ) , (25)

z=o: q = o (i=l, ..., M ) , Q W.1

.=o ( j = l , .*.,M,"), (27)

(i = 1, .*., M), (28)

Q:(z)-tg;@(z-Az;,x;)=$&;<(X;) ( k = 1, ..., N ) . (29)

i=l i=l

The Laplace transform can then be applied, which yields,

(30)
dx
where the elements of M x M matrices A and B are given as,
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Paper from: Advanced Computational Methods in Heat Transfer, B Sunden and CA Brebbia (Editors).
ISBN 1-85312-906-2
Advancc.d Compututiod Mcthods in H a t Trumfc.r 457

By substituting eqn (6) into eqn (30) and integrating the non-homogeneous term,
the general solution of eqn (30) reads,
@ =H ~ D- cehD,
* (33)
The coefficient matrix D*is determined by the energy balances at the entrances,

(34)

(35)

(36)

' (37)

D, V' and V" are given by eqns (9), (22) and (23). The elements of G,
c' and c'' are set to be &e-Azvs, &CAriL""" and respectively. Using
the energy balance at the exits of streams,

O [ ( ~ ) - ~ ~ ~ ~ ( z - k ~= ,FxA,g!g )< ( x ; ' ( k = 1, .-., N ) , (38)

i=l i=l

we can also find the exit temperature vector of streams,

t!@ =G ! r V / a * - [G!,V?'* A($!Ji.-)i,,
-
(39)

3 Lumped parameter models for multistream heat exchangers

We first consider a two-stream heat exchanger in which the outlet temperatures
of fluids are selected as lumped parameter and the logarithmic mean temperature
difference (LMTD) is used to calculate the heat exchange between the two fluids.
The heat capacity of the wall material is divided into two parts according to the
heat transfer parameters at hot and cold sides, W,, = W , U , / ( U , + U , ) ,
W,, = W, U c / ( U h+U,) . The two heat capacities are added to those ofthe
corresponding fluids. The energy balances for cold fluid and hot fluid,
respectively, can be expressed as,

( W h + W Y n b , ) ~ + y ( ~ ~ - t ; ) = - k F( ~A +f ~W~ M
, ,,)~+~,(t~-f~)=kFAt,,,,(40)
dz dz
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in which At,nis the LMTD between hot and cold fluid. If the flow disturbances
occur only in the cold fluid, the overall heat transfer coefficient k can be
expressed as k = ( a + cm;’)-‘ . After linearization, the above equations can be
transformed into the Laplace plane and the transfer functions relating the outlet
temperatures of hot and cold fluids to the mass flow rate of cold fluid are
deduced as,

A<”
--
H,(z,,s+ 1) A<”
--
ffc(~acs++l)
A%<
-

.ty’s2 Y + I .
(41)

The transfer functions relating the outlet temperatures of hot and cold fluids to
the inlet temperature of the cold fluid have the same form as eqns (41).
In a multistream heat exchanger a disturbance in any stream has an influence
on outlet temperatures of all streams. The resulting transfer functions from either
lumped parameter model or distributed parameter model would be very
complicated. Therefore a lumped-distributed parameter model is developed in
which the structure of transfer functions takes the same form as that resulted from
the lumped parameter model but their coefficients are determined by
experimental dataor numerical results or analytical solution of distributed
parameter model. The transfer functions relating the outlet temperature of fluid i
to the inlet temperature disturbance of fluid j and that to the mass flow
disturbance of fluid j can be approximately expressed as,

respectively, whose coefficients are determined by experimental data or

numerical results. The excess temperature response of a multistream heat
exchanger i n the time domain can be obtained as,

e”=At:= ~[L-l(Gt.jjAy)+ L-l(G,izjjA%,]]. (43)

j=l

Experimental outlet temperature responses of a four-stream plate-fin heat

exchanger to a step change in the mass flow rate of stream C and an exponential
inlet temperature change of stream B are shown in Fig. 1 together with predicted
results from the lumped-distributed parameter model. Good agreements are found
between them.

4 Conclusions
A general mathematical model for predicting temperature responses of one-
dimensional flow heat exchangers is proposed which can be applied to the
dynamic analysis of multistream/multipass shell-and-tube heat exchangers, plate
heat exchangers, plate-fin heat exchangers and their networks. In this model the
© 2002 WIT Press, Ashurst Lodge, Southampton, SO40 7AA, UK. All rights reserved.
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Paper from: Advanced Computational Methods in Heat Transfer, B Sunden and CA Brebbia (Editors).
ISBN 1-85312-906-2
Advancc.d Compututiod Mcthods in H a t Trumfc.r 459

, ,
::::~-7zz--
27.8 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

l l Measured data 1
- Calculatedresults i Calculatedresults

20.0 t
1 27.2

E 27.0-

26.8 ~

18.51 266-

m+ 26.4 ~
. . .'
17.5
0
L, 20
, ,
40
, 1

GO
, I

80
, ,
IC0
.
120
140
160 180
7 (5)

(a) Stream A (b) Stream B

2LZC l M e a u r d data l Mezsured d m

Cslc"latcd results

13.0 -
t I
128 , , , , , , 1 , , I , l , - , , ,
0 20 60
40 80 100 120
140 160 180
T(S)

(c) Stream C (d) Stream D

Figure 1 : Outlet temperature responses of a four-stream plate-fin heat exchanger

to a step change in m B from 0.2 to 0.24 kgls and an exponential
change in t;( from 19.17 to 12.OS"C. = 0.4 kgk, m
,
m
,
= 0.2 kgk, m
,
= 0.2 kgk, t; = 30.6 "C, t h = 20.0 "C, t h = 10.8 "C.

time delays in connecting pipes are considered with the assumption that the time
delays are constant and the heat capacities of the pipes are negligible. However,
one can also take the connecting pipes as additional channels of exchangers to
avoid these assumptions.
The dynamic response to arbitrary temperature transients from a uniform
initial condition or steady-state condition isa linear problem. For non-linear
problems, e.g. disturbances in thermal flow rates, heat transfer coefficients and
flow distributions, a linearization is demanded. The analytical solutions ofthe
general model for both linear problems and linearized non-linear problems are
obtained in the Laplace domain and the temperature responses in the time domain
are calculated with numerical inverse algorithm such as FFT technique.
Based on the analytical and numerical analyses a simplified form of transfer
function is suggested, with which the process control can easily be realized. The
© 2002 WIT Press, Ashurst Lodge, Southampton, SO40 7AA, UK. All rights reserved.
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Paper from: Advanced Computational Methods in Heat Transfer, B Sunden and CA Brebbia (Editors).
ISBN 1-85312-906-2
460 Advmced Compututiod Methods i t 1 H w t Trmsf?r

dynamic parameters appearing in the simplified transfer functions are evaluated

by comparison of the time-domain temperature responses obtained from the
simplified transfer functions with experimental data or analytical solutions or
numerical results.

Acknowledgement
The present research workbelongs to the project “Optimal design, flexibility
analysis and dynamic simulation of multistream heat exchanger networks” (No.
R0294/9) supported bythe Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the
project “Field synergetics and control of heat transfer processes with multiple
streams” (No. G2000026301) supported by the National Development Program
of China for Key Fundamental Researches. The authors would like to
acknowledge the above financial supports.

References
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Roetzel, W., Transient analysis in heat exchangers, New Developments in
HeatExchangers, ed. N.Afgan et al., Gordon and Breach Publishers,
Amsterdam, pp. 547-575, 1996.
Roetzel, W. and Xuan, Y., Dynamic Behaviour of Heat Exchangers, WIT
Press, Boston, 1999.
Luo, X. and Roetzel, W., The single-blow transient testing technique for
plate-fin heat exchangers, International Journal of Heat and Muss transfer,
44(19), pp. 37453753,2001.
Luo, X., Roetzel, W. and Ludersen, U., The single-blow transient testing
technique considering longitudinal core conduction and fluid dispersion,
International Journal of Heat and Mass transfer, 44, pp. 121-129, 2001.
Na Ranong, C., Stationures undinstationaresVerhaltenvon zwei
gekoppelten Wurmeiibertragern mit umlaufendem Fluidstrom, Dissertation,
Universitat der Bundeswehr Hamburg, 2001.
Du, P., Transient characteristics of multistream plate-fin heat exchangers,
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Chinese), 1996.
Roetzel, W. and Luo, X., Sensitivity analysis for multistream heat
exchangers, Proceedings of the 13th School-Seminar of Young Scientists
andSpecialistson the Physical Principals of Experimentaland
Mathematical Simulation of Heat and Mass Transfer and gas Dynamics in
Power Plants,MPEI Publishers, Moscow, 2, pp. 401407,2001.