Development of Heat Exchangers Design Tool

The main purpose of heat exchanger is to control a system’s or substance’s temperature either by adding or removing thermal energy. Suitable heat exchanger is essential as it can help in decreasing the operating cost and keep the efficiency of the system at the highest level possible. As there are many types of heat exchanger, a design selection tool is essential to predict and compare the performance for each type of heat exchanger. Focusing on three types of heat exchanger, Shell and Tube heat exchange, Plate Fin heat exchanger and Finned Tube heat exchanger, this project is intended to develop a tool for a design selection of heat exchanger. The developed tool worked base on four main steps. The first step in using the tool, user is required to key in the thermal properties of the system. The next step required user to key in the physical properties of the heat exchanger. With the availability of the thermal and physical properties, the tool will then calculate the performance of the heat exchanger in the third stage. Lastly, the performance of each heat exchanger will be represented graphically as to ease user to do comparison and analysis of the performance of each heat exchanger. The tool was developed using Microsoft Excel and base on the fundamental of heat transfer concepts. The performance of the heat exchanger is defined by three main elements which are heat transfer coefficient, pressure drop and effectiveness.
This report consists of four main part including introduction, problem statement, objective, literature review, methodology used in developing the standard designing tool, result and discussion and conclusion and recommendation.