Heat Exchanger Design and Optimization

A heat exchanger is a unit operation used to transfer heat between two or more fluids at different temperatures. There are many different types of heat exchangers that are categorized based on different criteria, such as construction, flow arrangement, heat transfer mechanism, etc. Heat exchangers are optimized based on their applications. The most common criteria for optimization of heat exchangers are the minimum initial cost, minimum operation cost, maximum effectiveness, minimum pressure drop, minimum heat transfer area, minimum weight, or material. Using the data modeling, the optimization of a heat exchanger can be transformed into a constrained optimization problem and then solved by modern optimization algorithms. In this chapter, the thermal design and optimization of shell and tube heat exchangers are presented.