DESIGN OF SHELL AND TUBE HEAT EXCHANGERS BY THE METHOD OF EFFICIENCY - NUMBER OF TRANSFER UNITS AND COST OPTIMIZATION USING MATLAB

Abstract

Heat exchangers may have various uses, but in general, are used to recover heat between two streams in a process. Shell and tube heat exchangers are the most important part of the heat transfer equipment without combustion in chemical processing plants. They consist of a series of linear tubes placed in a big tube called shell and represent an alternative to the need for a large heat transfer. Research and development in heat transfer are of significant importance in many branches of technology, including energy technology. New developments include exchanger optimization criteria from an energy standpoint, but without taking into account the mechanical constraints imposed by the standards In the present paper is performed firstly the thermal modeling of an industrial shell and tube exchanger, using the method å - NTU and BellDelaware approach to estimate the coefficient of heat transfer and pressure drop across theshell. Subsequently, the exchanger was optimized by maximizing efficiency and minimizing the total cost using the MATLAB R2009 software. The results obtained by exact methods and heuristics ones are compared. The savings for fuel and building materials concept that presupposes optimization are showed. The Genetic Algorithms Optimization technique was applied to provide a set of Pareto optimal solutions.