Merits and Demerits of Plate Heat Exchangers

The first plate heat exchanger was invented in the year 1923 and the process of indirect heat transfer revolutionized since then. These products are nowadays often found in Perth homes, commercial institutions and manufacturing plants of various industries.

Let us throw some light on the different merits of plate heat exchangers that certainly make them the ideal devices for many heat transfer applications.

Compactness

These devices make use of thin metal sheets for transferring heat from one liquid to another. These metal plates are lined with corrugations that give them a large surface area for an extremely small volume. This makes the product small in size in comparison to other heat exchangers, leaving you with more space that can be utilized for keeping other things. The device is capable of having the same thermal coefficient as that of a tubular type, which is five times its size. This feature is especially helpful in small size homes, offices and manufacturing plants of Perth that do not want to waste space unnecessarily.

Flexibility

They are flexible in the sense that they can be used in many applications with minor alterations. In case there is a need for applying alterations, they can be implemented with relative ease and you do not have to invest in a new plate heat exchanger. These devices can also work on a vast variety of fluids and therefore, they are compatible with a large range of industrial applications.

Easy Installation and Maintenance

If you have the required tools, you can assemble and dismantle these robust machines with ease. They look relatively similar on the outside and you do not have to tense yourself about incompatible gasket sizes, changeable input and output valves and pipes etc. Cleaning and maintenance activities for this machine are easy.

High thermal efficiency

In comparison to other heat exchangers, plate heat exchangers operate at higher thermal efficiency. This is because of the large surface area of the plates. The cooling and heating fluids spread over the plates, allowing them to have more contact for heat transfer. There are narrow chambers between every plate which aim to enhance the volume of liquid coming in contact with the thin sheets of metal.

Economical

Since the size of these machines is small, lesser material is required to fabricate it. These exchangers are cheaper than other heat exchangers and also give the highest thermal capacity. They are considered to be the most economic option for heat transfer tasks.

Moving on to the demerits of the device

Leakage

Chances that shell and tube type heat exchangers leak are less when compared to plate heat exchangers. Even though the plates and gaskets in plate exchangers are tightly sealed, there are chances of a leakage when you run them outside of normal operating regions.

Temperature difference

They work well with fluids with minimal to optimum temperature differences. But they cannot work as efficiently as shell and tube type exchangers for fluids with great differences in temperature.

To conclude, the merits of plate heat exchangers make them a best buy for general heat transfer applications.

A heat exchanger possesses multiple merits ranging from compactness, to flexibility, to ease in installation and maintenance, to higher efficiency. For a better insight into the functioning of heat exchangers, visit this link.