Advantages of Plate Heat Exchangers
- High Efficiency: The corrugated plates create high turbulence, leading to very high heat transfer coefficients. They are often more efficient than shell and tube heat exchangers of a comparable size.
- Compact Size: For the same duty, a PHE is significantly smaller and lighter than a traditional shell and tube heat exchanger, saving valuable floor space.
- Easy Maintenance and Cleaning: The unit can be easily opened by loosening the bolts and sliding the pressure plate back. This allows for direct access to all heat transfer surfaces for inspection, cleaning, or replacing plates (known as maintainability).
- Flexibility: The heat transfer area can be easily increased or decreased by adding or removing plates from the frame, allowing for easy capacity adjustment.
- Close Temperature Approach: They can achieve temperature approaches (the difference between the hot fluid outlet and cold fluid inlet temperatures) as low as 1°C, which is difficult for other types of exchangers.