Chapter 11:

Heat Exchangers
 Definition
• Heat exchangers are used in the process of heat exchange between
two fluids that are at different temperatures and separated by a solid
wall.

• They are used in many engineering applications such as air-

conditioning, power production, waste heat recovery, and chemical
processing.

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 Heat Exchanger Types
Concentric tube heat exchangers:

(a) Parallel flow: The hot and cold

fluids enter at the same end, flow
in the same direction, and leave
at the same end.

(b) Counterflow: the fluids enter

at opposite ends, flow in opposite
directions, and leave at opposite
ends.

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Heat Exchanger Types (continued)
Cross-flow heat exchangers:
(a) Finned with both fluids unmixed.
(b) Unfinned with one fluid mixed and the other unmixed.

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Heat Exchanger Types (continued)
• Shell-and-tube heat exchanger:
(a) One shell pass and one tube pass (cross-counterflow mode of
operation).

(b) One shell pass and two tube passes.

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 The Overall Heat Transfer Coefficient
• An essential part of any heat exchanger analysis is determination of
the overall heat transfer coefficient.

• For a wall separating two fluid streams, the overall heat transfer
coefficient may be expressed as:

where c and h refer to the cold and hot fluids, respectively.

• The equation above applies only to clean, unfinned surfaces.

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• During normal heat exchanger operation, surfaces are often subject
to fouling by fluid impurities, rust formation, or other reactions
between the fluid and the wall material.
The deposition of a film on the surface can greatly increase the
resistance to heat transfer between the fluids and can be treated by
introducing an additional thermal resistance, termed the fouling
factor, Rf.

• In addition, we know that fins are often added to surfaces exposed

to either or both fluids and that, by increasing the surface area, they
reduce the overall resistance to heat transfer.

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• The overall heat transfer coefficient is modified to account for
surface fouling and extended surface (fin) effects:

• The quantity ηo is called the overall surface efficiency or

temperature effectiveness of a finned surface.
It is defined such that, for the hot or cold surface without fouling,
the heat transfer rate is:

where Tb is the base surface temperature and A is the total (fin plus
exposed base) surface area.

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• For the unfinned, tubular heat exchangers the modified overall heat
transfer coefficient reduces to:

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 The Effectiveness–NTU Method
• If q is the total rate of heat transfer between the hot and cold fluids,
application of the steady flow energy equation, gives (negligible
heat transfer with surroundings, negligible potential and kinetic
energy changes, no phase change and constant specific heats are
assumed):
and

h and c refer to the hot and cold fluids, i and o refers to the fluid
inlet and outlet conditions.

• The hot fluid heat capacity rate is defined as

and that of the cold fluid is defined as
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• The maximum possible heat transfer rate, qmax, for the exchanger
could, in principle, be achieved in a counterflow heat exchanger of
infinite length.

• In such an exchanger, one of the fluids would experience the

maximum possible temperature difference, Th,i - Tc,i. Proof:
a). If Cc < Ch => 𝑑𝑇𝑐 > 𝑑𝑇ℎ and since L → ∞ => Tc,o = Th,i
=> qmax = Cc(Th,i - Tc,i)
b). If Ch < Cc => qmax = Ch(Th,i - Tc,i)
where Cmin is equal to Cc or Ch ,
whichever is smaller
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• The effectiveness, ε, is defined as the ratio of the actual heat transfer
rate for a heat exchanger to the maximum possible heat transfer
rate:

• Therefore, the actual heat transfer rate may be expressed as:

• For any heat exchanger it can be shown that:

; Cr = Cmin/Cmax is heat capacity ratio

where NTU, or number of transfer units, is a dimensionless

parameter defined as:

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• In heat exchanger design calculations, it is more convenient to work
with ε–NTU relations of the form:

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 Effectiveness of a parallel-flow Effectiveness of a
heat exchanger counterflow heat exchanger

*Similar graphs exist for different types of heat exchangers.

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