Guide to Heat Exchangers
This guide is designed for processors, production managers, and mechanical engineers to help in the heat exchanger selection process.
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Chapter 1
Chapter 1
→Introduction
Heat exchangers come in a variety of designs for controlling temperatures in food, dairy, beverage, and pharmaceutical processing. Heat exchangers help processors maintain efficient operations for pasteurization, sterilization, clean-in-place and other hygienic operations.
This guide is designed for processors, production managers, and mechanical engineers to help in the heat exchanger selection process. We discuss three types of heat exchangers: plate and frame, shell and tube, and scraped surface. Depending on your application, each design has advantages and disadvantages and their own guidelines for maintaining peak performance.
PURPOSE OF HEAT EXCHANGERS
The purpose of heat exchangers is to transfer heat between two or more fluids to regulate temperatures during food, dairy, beverage, and pharmaceutical processing.
For example heat exchangers make products safe for consumption and extend shelf life by preventing growth of harmful microbes. Heat exchangers pasteurize fluids by controlling temperatures for fixed periods of time.
In hygienic processing, ingredients must be mixed at specific temperatures to ensure safe use and product quality. Finally, heat exchangers meet demand for efficient processing by maximizing heat-transfer surface area between fluids of different temperatures while optimizing flow.
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This guide is designed for processors, production managers, and mechanical engineers to help in the heat exchanger selection process.