David Averous, Florian Picard and Gilles Aubert, Fives Cryogenie, France
Aluminium Brazed Plate Fin Heat Exchangers have been frequently used in cryogenics industry, in particular in gas processing applications such as LNG plants. The complex technology of Plate-Fin Heat Exchanger (PFHE) offers a high-level heat transfer capacity and a large range of allowable pressures, but requires highly skilled design.
Optimal design leads to some difficulties because any hydraulic or thermal perturbation on a stream is directly propagated to the others through the aluminium core matrix, and could directly impact on the mechanical integrity of the exchanger. This is particularly applicable to off-design and non-steady state conditions.
The paper focuses on the implementation of technical resources in order to provide accurate expertise for the operation of PFHEs, including thermo-hydraulic analysis and mechanical stresses studies. Some in-house computational tools are used to highlight the physical phenomena which are inherent to the behaviour of PFHEs. The reliability of PFHE is directly based on such calculations in order to define and continuously improve the standard design rules.
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