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Chemical Engineering vocabulary · Heat Transfer

Heat exchanger

Meaning in chemical engineering, with examples

/ˈhiːt ɪksˌtʃeɪndʒər/nounCore term

In chemical engineering, heat exchanger means: A 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.

In Turkish: ısı değiştirici, ısı değiştiricisi, eşanjör

How it is used

Found in every plant. Engineers size, rate, clean and bypass heat exchangers. The main types are shell-and-tube, plate and air-cooled exchangers. People often shorten the word to 'exchanger'.

Example sentences

  1. The feed is preheated in a shell-and-tube heat exchanger using the hot reactor effluent.

  2. We need to open the heat exchanger and clean the tubes during the shutdown.

Common collocations

  • shell-and-tube heat exchanger
  • plate heat exchanger
  • heat exchanger network
  • clean a heat exchanger
  • 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.
  • heat dutyThe amount of heat that a heat exchanger, reboiler, condenser or furnace must transfer per unit time, usually given in kW or MW.
  • foulingThe build-up of unwanted deposits such as scale, coke, polymer or biological growth on equipment surfaces, which reduces heat transfer and increases pressure drop.
  • condenserA heat exchanger that cools a vapor until it turns back into liquid, for example at the top of a distillation column or at the exhaust of a steam turbine.
  • 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.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Heat Transfer

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