How to distinguish various heat exchangers by their appearance
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Our company has three types of heat exchangers: fixed-tube plate type, U-tube type, and floating-head type. I would like to ask the experts: how can one visually tell the differences on site?
You can check reference books on chemical engineering principles, as well as books on chemical engineering equipment and chemical engineering design manuals; they also contain relevant information
The forum has manuals on chemical engineering machinery and heat exchangers. A simple way to determine this: a U-tube heat exchanger has only one end cap; the end cap of a floating head is larger than the diameter of the shell, while in a fixed-plate heat exchanger, the end caps of the tube sheet and the shell have the same diameter. Summarized by myself for reference only
Reply to 3# holyshit: Brother, could you be a bit more detailed? What if the label falls off? What if it gets rusted? Uh. . .
Reply to 4# zccchunchen: Thank you, Brother Chun. I’ve also made some summaries; generally, for U-shaped tubes, the inlets and outlets are on one end, and there are no expansion joints； Fixed tube sheet; no expansion joints for shells with smaller diameters, expansion joints for those with larger diameters; inlets and outlets are located at both ends ； Floating head type, with the inlets and outlets on one end, but the head on that end is smaller than the floating head on the other end. I wonder if there’s any truth to it!
The inlet and outlet of a floating-head heat exchanger are not necessarily located on the same section; it relies on the floating head to address thermal expansion issues, as there are no expansion joints.
Whether there is an inlet or outlet at one end is determined by the number of stages; in the case of a floating head design, one end has a floating head – how could there be two floating heads? The presence of expansion joints is determined by thermal stress differences; read more books