Heat exchange is one of the most common unit operations in industrial plants. It is used to increase stream temperature or to decrease the temperature in order to make have a more efficient process and comply with customer requirements. Aspen Hysys and Unisim Design are useful tools that the chemical process engineer can use to save time in heat exchange calculation.
As a process engineer working with plant design, you may face to kind of challenges related to heat exchange. The first one, if it is a greenfield project, i. e., the is no existing plant operating, you will develop or adjust your process simulation to calculate the heat flow needed to run your process. For instance, how much heat flow is needed to cool down a hot stream. How much heat flow is needed to vaporize or partially vaporize another stream and so on. Unless you work in a heat exchanger facility, you will not design the heat exchanger. I mean, it is not the duty of the process engineer to define the number of tubes, size of the tubes and other mechanical features related to the heat exchanger design. Your mission is to develop a process datasheet for heat exchanger equipment other than the heat exchanger supplier is able to design and quote the equipment for your project. That way, the use of most chemical process simulation software is enough to help you because they will do calculations faster than you. Just to remind you, the main equations for heat exchange are, and I will not get in details of these equations:
(1) Q=m.c.dT
(2) Q=U.A.dT
On the other hand, you may face a brownfield project, or need to evaluate an existing heat exchanger. In this case, although Aspen HYSYS and Unisim Design may be of great help, eventually, I will need to use a more specific heat exchange software as HTFS or HTRI. I can talk about them in another post.
PS. I have used HTFS in greenfield projects to simulate Air Separation Units because, in this case, the Plate Fin Exchanger is the core equipment for this process.
HEAT EXCHANGER IN ASPEN HYSYS | UNISIM DESIGN
This video shows you what you should know when designing a heat exchanger in Aspen HYSYS and in Unisim Design. Moreover, you will learn how to add an energy recovery system using a compressor discharge temperature.
To download the simulation used in this video, you just need to give your like and join my telegram free mentoring channel INPROCESS. More info on how to download the file is given at the end of the video.
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