Calculation of plate-fin heat exchangers, heat transfer area, and calculation software
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I need to calculate a plate-fin heat exchanger recently, and I have the following questions: 1. I know the total load on the cold side (30 KW), as well as the flow rate and temperature changes of the fluid on the hot side. How can I calculate the total heat transfer area? If I use aluminum plates for the heat exchanger, can I simply use the heat transfer coefficient of aluminum as the total heat transfer coefficient? 2. I have previously calculated many shell-and-tube heat exchangers, using software such as ASPEN PLUS and HTRI, but now I’m not sure which software to use for finned heat exchangers. I only know the total load on the cold side; I don’t know things like the fluid flow rate. Is it possible to use software to carry out these calculations? 3. Additionally, can I first calculate the required heat exchange area using a flat-plate heat exchanger, and then convert these values to the corresponding areas for a plate-fin heat exchanger by taking into account the efficiency of primary and secondary heat exchange in such exchangers? 4. Finally, I would like to ask what the error is between the results calculated by software and the actual values for plate fins. I think the calculation simulation software for shell-and-tube exchangers performs quite well; I’m not sure how this software fares. After reading many posts, it seems that its performance isn’t as good as that of the software used for shell-and-tube exchangers. Thank you very much; I hope everyone will not hesitate to share their advice.
It seems that there are no general-purpose software available for calculating plate-fin heat exchangers, as they are relatively special types of heat exchangers. Software such as PRO2 and HYSYS, which can perform recalculation for such heat exchangers, only conduct reviews based on thermal properties; the specific internal design is usually carried out by specialized manufacturers through calculations, and it depends on the specific configuration of the flow channels.
Calculation software for plate-fin heat exchangers includes ASPEN EDR; the older version is ASPEN MUSE. UNISIM also has software for calculating plate-fin heat exchangers, and HTRI has XPFE.