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Chemical Engineering vocabulary · Heat Transfer

Heat duty

Meaning in chemical engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In chemical engineering, heat duty means: The amount of heat that a heat exchanger, reboiler, condenser or furnace must transfer per unit time, usually given in kW or MW.

In Turkish: ısı yükü, termal yük

How it is used

Used on datasheets and in design and performance checks. Engineers calculate the heat duty from the energy balance and use it to size equipment. People often just say 'duty': 'the condenser duty is 4 MW'.

Example sentences

  1. The heat duty of the feed preheater is 1.8 MW at design rates.

  2. Fouling has reduced the exchanger's heat duty by about 20%.

Common collocations

  • exchanger duty
  • reboiler duty
  • condenser duty
  • design heat duty
  • energy balanceA calculation that tracks all the energy entering and leaving a system as heat, work and the enthalpy of the streams, so that heating and cooling needs can be found.
  • heat exchangerA piece of equipment that moves heat from one fluid to another without letting them mix, for example from hot oil to cold water through the walls of tubes or plates.
  • heat transfer coefficientA number that shows how easily heat passes from one fluid to another through a wall, measured in W/(m²·K). The higher it is, the smaller the exchanger can be.
  • reboilerA heat exchanger at the bottom of a distillation column that boils part of the bottom liquid to produce the vapor that rises up the column.

More terms: Heat Transfer

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