Air-cooled heal exchangers represent a growing segment of equipment being applied in the heat transfer field. It is quite common, these days, for air-cooled heat exchangers to handle more than half the heat dissipation load in a refinery or petrochemical plant. This rapid growth has occurred because of certain advantages inherent in air-cooled heat exchangers as compared to shell-and-tube or other types of heat exchangers. Some of the advantages are the following:
- The heat exchangers can be located at any point within a refinery, thus eliminating long pipe runs for either the process fluid or the cooling water.
- Scale builds up on the cooling water side of a shell-and-tube heat exchanger is eliminated, as well as the related shutdowns for cleaning.
- Cooling tower water treatment and disposal of resulting waste water is eliminated.
- The overall cost of dissipating heat by this means is generally less than by other methods for fluid streams above 66 °C (150 °F).