The potential for the overall optimization of heat exchanger systems for process plants is considered. By using a more systematic approach, considerable savings in energy and capital may be possible. The next section of the paper deals with the scope for improvement of existing heat exchanger designs with particular reference to shell-and-tube heat exchangers and tube-in-plate heat exchangers. In the future, there is likely to be an increasing trend toward modularization and examples cited here are those of the plate exchanger and the heat pipe heat exchanger. Perhaps the most important unsolved problem is that of heat exchanger fouling and this area is discussed next. Costs of fouling in the U.K. are likely to be in the range of £300M to £500M☆ per annum. A number of research tools are becoming available for the study of heat exchange systems and two of these (namely electrochemical analogue techniques and numerical flow modeling) are reviewed in the final section of the paper.
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