To achieve improvement in PHEs, two important factors have to be considered, namely the amount of heat transfer and pressure drop, such that the amount of heat transfer needs to be increased and pressure drops need to be decreased. In plate heat exchangers, due to the presence of corrugated plate, there is a significant resistance to flow with high friction loss. Thus to design plate heat exchangers, one should consider both factors.
For various ranges of Reynolds numbers, many correlations and chevron angles for plate heat exchangers exist. The plate geometry is one of the most important factors in heat transfer and pressure drop in plate heat exchangers; however, such a feature is not accurately prescribed. In the corrugated plate heat exchangers, because of narrow paths between the plates, there is a large pressure capacity and the flow becomes turbulent along the path. Therefore, it requires more pumping power than the other types of heat exchangers. Therefore, higher heat transfer and less pressure drop are targeted. The shape of plate heat exchanger is very important for industrial applications that are affected by pressure drop.