Heat Exchanger
Date：2025-10-29 08:52:25 Visit：6
What is a heat exchanger?
Put simply, a heat exchanger is a device which transfers heat from one medium to another, a hydraulic oil cooler, for example, will remove heat from hot oil by using cold water or air. Alternatively, a swimming pool heat exchanger uses hot water from a boiler or solar heated water circuit to heat the pool water.
Heat is transferred by conduction through the exchanger materials which separate the mediums being used. A shell and tube heat exchanger passes fluids through and over tubes, where-as an air cooled heat exchanger passes cool air through a core of fins to cool a liquid.
A heat exchanger is a device used to transfer heat between two or more fluids. The fluids can be single or two phase and, depending on the exchanger type, may be separated or in direct contact. Devices involving energy sources such as nuclear fuel pins or fired heaters are not normally regarded as heat exchangers although many of the principles involved in their design are the same.
In order to discuss heat exchangers it is necessary to provide some form of categorization. There are two approaches that are normally taken. The first considers the flow configuration within the heat exchanger, while the second is based on the classification of equipment type primarily by construction. Both are considered here.
Classification of Heat Exchangers by Flow Configuration
There are four basic flow configurations:
l Counter Flow
l Cocurrent Flow
l Crossflow
l Hybrids such as Cross Counterflow and Multi Pass Flow
