Solutions to insufficient heat exchange area in plate heat exchangers

It depends on how much the heat exchange area differs. If the difference isn’t significant, the heat exchange area can be increased by adding more plates. However, if the difference is large, this approach won’t work, as the space available for increasing the area in a plate heat exchanger is limited due to the constraints imposed by the spacers and clamping bolts; generally, this increase doesn’t exceed 10% of the original heat exchange area. If there is a significant difference in the heat exchange area, an additional plate heat exchanger needs to be added and used in parallel with the original heat exchanger. There is another method to solve this problem, but it requires that the areas be roughly similar. You can address this by increasing the system flow rate in order to raise the overall heat transfer coefficient. Of course, this will lead to an increase in resistance, and therefore a certain amount of kinetic energy must be added to maintain the proper operation of the system, which inevitably results in higher operating costs.