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Heat exchangers are the basic Heat transfer equipment used in Chemical Process industries for wide
range of applications. Varying temperature requirements of streams in a chemical process facilitates the
use of heat exchanger.
Heat Exchanger application in a Chemical industry is outlined as follows.
Heat Exchangers
This type of Heat Exchanger is generic form which uses the process stream in both shell side and tube
side. They may be classified into two types depending on the phase change.
Heat Exchangers without Phase Change
Liquid Liquid, Gas- Gas, Liquid Gas exchangers are the examples of this type. An example for this
Application includes Methanator Feed Product exchanger in a Hydrogen plant where Gas-Gas heat
transfer occurs.
Heat Exchangers with Phase Change
Phase change occurs in this type of Heat exchangers by vaporization. An example for this is Reactor
Effluent and Fractionator feed exchanger where in feed is vaporized to aid phase change with the help of
the reactor effluent.
Reboiler
Reboilers provide latent heat of vaporization to the liquid to produce vapor from it. Reboilers are classified
into three types as follows
A. Thermosiphon Reboiler
Thermosiphon reboiler operates based on static head of the liquid available at the stripping column
bottom. Normally heating medium is passed through tube side due to pressure drop limitation in shell
side. Horizontal thermosiphon reboilers are mostly used in Refinery and petrochemical plants. Vertical
thermosiphon reboilers with tube side vaporization are adopted by chemical plants.
Condensers
Hydrocarbon Condensers
Hydrocarbon condensers are used in distillation columns to condense the hydrocarbon vapors.
Surface Condensers
Surface condensers are used to produce vacuum in the exhaust of Steam turbines by condensing the
steam using cooling water or air. The efficiency of the steam turbines is greatly affected by the
performance of surface condensers.
Coolers
Coolers are used for transferring heat from process stream to utility stream like water or air.
After cooler
Shell and tube Heat exchangers are normally employed as after coolers in Compressors to cool the
process gas. The aim is to remove the heat generated due to compression in order to remove
condensable vapors or to reduce the gas volume for enabling storage or as per downstream process
requirement for example absorber feed.
Inter cooler
Similar to after coolers compressor intercoolers are used for removing compression heat to increase the
volumetric efficiency of the compressors. Thus it helps to avoid the compressor discharge temperature in
next stage to go beyond the design limits.
Liquid Coolers
Liquid coolers are normally product coolers used in Refinery and petrochemical applications. They cool
the flammable and volatile liquids before sending them to storage tanks. Cooler outlet temperatures are to
be carefully maintained as high temperature will lead to high vaporization and loss in storage tanks.
SOURCE: http://www.chemicalengineeringsite.com/heat-exchanger-
applications-chemical-industry/300