che_march-2024 - 13

Newsfront
New Heat Exchangers Improve
Performance and Sustainability
Improvements in energy efficiency, reliability and operational boundaries reduce emissions
and cut costs
D
ue to a demand to increase margins
and meet sustainability and decarbonization
targets, today's chemical
processors are seeking ways to
improve energy efficiency and reliability while
also reducing emissions. Fortunately, innovations
in heat exchangers are helping them
meet these goals. Recent and anticipated
heat-exchanger developments are pushing
traditional operational boundaries to increase
heat-transfer efficiency and reduce utility consumption
and maintenance needs, while also
improving operational performance, even in
the severe conditions associated with the
chemical process industries (CPI).
" Innovations and new developments in heat
exchangers are driven by process needs or
the need to operate the plant more efficiently
- or more importantly - safely, " says Rutger
Theunissen, chief business officer of services
and supplies with Lummus Technology
(Houston; www.lummustechnology.com).
" We continue to look for ways to improve our
heat exchangers to meet a variety of needs:
improving sustainability and reducing environmental
impacts (such as implementing electrification
or lowering emissions from firing);
using materials-science innovation to ensure
the materials of construction can withstand
more severe conditions; and improving fouling
mitigation and optimizing maintenance
requirements to reduce operating expenses. "
Boosting heat-exchanger efficiency
As sustainability goals continue to expand,
increasing the efficiency of heat transfer is
becoming a growing priority for manufacturers
of heat exchangers, and they are rising to
the challenge with tweaks on existing technologies
and the development of new ones
that manage to boost efficiency, operational
performance and reliability, allowing chemical
processors to cut costs, increase profits
and reduce their carbon footprint.
" All chemical processing industries are
developing roadmaps and targets for deSpirax
Sarco
IN BRIEF
BOOSTING HEATEXCHANGER
EFFICIENCY
PERFORMANCE AND
RELIABILITY
NEW APPLICATIONS
FIGURE 1. Spirax Sarco's Turflow heat exchangers offer a
straight corrugated-tube design that induces turbulence in
the flow of the fluid, providing a self-cleaning effect, which
reduces scale buildup and delivers a more consistent and
higher heat-transfer rate
carbonizing their processes and reducing
emissions, " notes Alasdair Maciver, who is
responsible for the development of business
and heat exchanger solutions with the cleantechnology
space, specifically in energy
storage applications, at Alfa Laval (Lund,
Sweden; www.alfalaval.com). " The most
effective short-term way of doing this is by
reducing energy consumption, which means
increasing energy efficiency. Plate-type heat
exchangers are fundamentally more efficient
than tubular types, so this is an obvious lowhanging
fruit for them. The more challenging
part is to increase the scope of plate heat
exchangers, moving plate heat exchangers
into larger and more demanding processes
in terms of capacity, pressure, temperature
and aggressive fluids. "
He continues: " We are focusing our heatexchanger
development to make heat exchangers
that are even more efficient, reliable
and cost competitive from a lifecycle
perspective. Specifically, this means working
with optimization of the plate design for
thermal efficiency, new materials for strength
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
MARCH 2024
13
http://www.lummustechnology.com http://www.alfalaval.com http://WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
che_march-2024

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